"Only that instinct warned them that this woman was not a friend. I,
myself, in spite of my age, felt a marked attraction, as all men did.
The appeal of sex in this woman was overpowering, although I looked in
vain for the evidences of a passionate nature; physically she was
normal, a slight valvular trouble of the heart I fancy, from what I
heard, but nothing more. She had left a good home to travel about with
a rather dissipated party, all of whom were of much coarser fibre than
herself. I later had a long conversation with the young man, who had
spent in a few weeks a small fortune upon her. He loved her in his
way. She traded upon his love, but I am convinced that she never
rewarded it. I happened to come upon her one day as she lay asleep on
the sand; her face was like a mirror, reflecting the thoughts that
were running through her mind. At first I saw a fierce sexual passion
that frightened me; then as that passed another nature seemed to claim
her, and her look became so pure, so innocent, that I found myself
instinctively raising my hat and standing bareheaded in the sun. Wave
after wave of feeling passed over her sensitive features, good
following bad, purity following lust, the innocence of a child
following the look seen only on the face of one to whom all innocence
is a thing to laugh at. Doctor, I saw on that girl's face what one
might almost call a struggle between good impulses, inherited perhaps
from a pure mother, nurtured no doubt in an honest home, and the evil
of a nature in which, when she was conscious, there was no spark of
decency or honor left. It was like looking on at the struggles of a
divided soul, and slowly seeing the defeat of the good, the triumph of
the evil."
"This is indeed a terrible case," exclaimed Dr. Crossett. "What was
the end?"
"What the real end will be one can only guess," replied Mr. Miller.
"The end, so far as this episode of her life is concerned, began by a
brutal killing of my little granddaughter's dog, quite the most
dreadful scene I ever witnessed, and ended by her leaving the hotel in
the company of a man, who for her sake forgot the daughter whom he
loved with a most unusual affection and, blinded by the power of this
creature's animal sex appeal, made himself a laughing stock to his
acquaintances and a sorrow to his friends. The father disgraced in his
old age, the dupe of this girl who was but little older than the
daughter he left ashamed and heart-broken. Two men, one a young
life-guard, the other the fellow with whom she left her home, each of
them she left with good cause to remember her, and left with a poorer
opinion of the world and a bitterness against all women that will in
the end help on the evil she created in their hearts. To my little
grandchild she brought her first knowledge of the wickedness of the
world. To all whom she met she brought a sorrow; upon all whom she
left she left a trace of her own unworthiness."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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