�. Did Conchis remember that I believed myself remotely connected with d'Urf�The story of _L'Astr� is: The shepherdess Astr� hearing evil reports of the shepherd Celadon, banishes him from her presence. A war breaks out, and Astr�is taken prisoner. Celadon manages to rescue her, but she will not forgive him. He does not gain her hand until he has turned the lion and unicorns who devour unfaithful lovers into statues of stone. _Chaliapin_. Was at Covent Garden in June, 1914, and in _Prince Igor_. "_You may be elect_." When he said that, at our first strange meeting, he meant simply, "I've decided to use you." That was also the only sense in which, at the end, I could be elect. He meant, "We _have_ used you." _Lily and Rose_. Two twin sisters, both very pretty, gifted (though I came to doubt Lily's classical education), must, if they had been up at Oxford or Cambridge, have been the double Zuleika Dobsons of their years. I could not believe that they had been at Oxford--since our years must have overlapped--but on the principle that Lily never told me the truth if she could possibly mislead me, I tried it first. I concocted a story about my being a scout for an American film producer who needed a pair of fair-haired English twins and "had heard" of two at Oxford. It wasn't a very good story and it involved me in some ludicrous improvising--which incidentally made me realise in retrospect how great had been Lily's skill in that art. I tried the magazines, I tried the OUDS and the ETC, I even braved several of the women's college bursaries; and got nowhere. I went to Cambridge and did the same thing; and got nowhere; least of all at Girton. Of course I realise that because they were twin sisters there was no reason why they should have gone to the same university. But at both Cambridge and Oxford I was shown stills from all the main undergraduate productions of the last few years--and no Lily-Rose face in any of them. Armed with a slightly less implausible story--my rich American producer had become an eccentric rich American producer--I went round a few London theatrical agencies. Several of them had pairs of twins on their books, even blonde (or platinum blonde) twins; but not Lily or Rose. The Tavistock Repertory: a total blank. No productions of _Lysistrata_. The agent's name: unknown. I tried RADA; with similar unsuccess. One cunning device in the "Julie Holmes" invention: we tend to believe people who have had the same experiences as ourselves; who mirror us. So her naval commander father equaled my brigadier father; her Cambridge, my Oxford; her unhappy love affaire, mine; her year's teaching, mine. Her being "interfered with" was an irony, obviously; or perhaps an echo of Artemis's mythical fear of the pains of childbirth. But perhaps she told me this to make it easier for me to confess in return. Looks she gave me: as if she was waiting for something. And if I had spoken...? _Othello, Act I, Scene III._ _She is abus'd, stol'n from me, and corrupted_ _By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;_ _For nature so preposterously to err,_ _Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,_ _Sans witchcraft could not._
And:
_A maiden never bold;_ _Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion_ _Blush'd at herself; and she, in spite of nature,_ _Of years, of country, credit, every thing,_ _To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on!_ _Polymus Films_. I didn't see the obvious, that one misplaced letter, until painfully late. _The famous whore Io_. Lempri�: "In the ancient Gothic Io and Gio signified earth, as Isi or Isa signified 'ice' or water in its primordial state; and both were equally titles of the goddess, who represented the productive and nutritive power of the earth." Indian Kali, Syrian Astarte (Ashtaroth), Egyptian Isis and Greek Io were considered one and the same goddess. She had three colours (on the walls in the trial): white, red, and black, the phases of the moon, and also the phases of woman: virgin, mother, and crone. Lily was evidently the goddess in her white, virgin phase; and perhaps in the black, as well. Rose would have stood for the red phase; but then Alison was given that role. _Tartarus_. The more I read, the more I began to reidentify the whole situation at Bourani--or at any rate the final situation--with Tartarus. Tartarus was ruled by a king, Hades (or Conchis); a Queen, Persephone, bringer of destruction (Lily)--who remained "six months with Hades in the infernal regions and spent the rest of the year with her mother Demeter on earth." There was also a supreme judge in Tartarus--Minos (the presiding "doctor" with a beard?); and of course there was Anubis-Cerberus, the black dog with three heads (three roles?). And Tartarus was where Eurydice went when Orpheus lost her. I was aware that in all this I was acting the role I had decided not to act: that of detective, of hunter, and several times I abandoned the chase. But then one, and one of the apparently least promising, of my hits of research bore spectacular results.