"You cannot help being base," she said, steadily regarding me,--"because
you are a man. I am base because I am a woman. If we believed in a God,
either of us, we might discover some different way of life and love--who
knows?--but neither you nor I have any remnant of faith in a Being whose
existence all the scientists of the day are ever at work to disprove. We
are persistently taught that we are animals and nothing more,--let us
therefore not be ashamed of animalism. Animalism and atheism are
approved by the scientists and applauded by the press,--and the clergy
are powerless to enforce the faith they preach. Come Geoffrey, don't
stay mooning like a stricken Parsifal under those pines,--throw away
that thing which troubles you, your conscience,--throw it away as you
have thrown the book I was lately reading, and consider this,--that most
men of your type take pride and rejoice in being the prey of a bad
woman!--so you should really congratulate yourself on having one for a
wife!--one who is so broad-minded too, that she will always let you have
your own way in everything you do, provided you let her have hers! It is
the way all marriages are arranged nowadays,--at any rate in _our_
set,--otherwise the tie would be impossible of endurance. Come!"
"We cannot live together on such an understanding, Sibyl!" I said
hoarsely, as I walked slowly by her side towards the villa.
"Oh yes, we can!" she averred, a little malign smile playing round her
lips--"We can do as others do,--there is no necessity for us to stand
out from the rest like quixotic fools, and pose as models to other
married people,--we should only be detested for our pains. It is surely
better to be popular than virtuous,--virtue never pays! See, there is
our interesting German waiter coming to inform us that dinner is ready;
please don't look so utterly miserable, for we have not quarrelled, and
it would be foolish to let the servants think we have."
I made no answer. We entered the house, and dined,--Sibyl keeping up a
perfect fire of conversation, to which I replied in mere
monosyllables,--and after dinner we went as usual to sit in the
illuminated gardens of the adjacent hotel, and hear the band. Sibyl was
known, and universally admired and flattered by many of the people
staying there,----and, as she moved about among her acquaintances,
chatting first with one group and then with another, I sat in moody
silence, watching her with increasing wonderment and horror. Her beauty
seemed to me like the beauty of the poison-flower, which, brilliant in
colour and perfect in shape, exhales death to those who pluck it from
its stem. And that night, when I held her in my arms, and felt her heart
beating against my own in the darkness, an awful dread arose in me,--a
dread as to whether I might not at some time or other be tempted to
strangle her as she lay on my breast----strangle her as one would
strangle a vampire that sucked one's blood and strength away!