... Le texte est du même ordre avec ... le vieux style dit décadent, mort hier, déjà horriblement pourri, et la pluie des androgynes, y compris la Saint-Jean-de Vinci. Tout cela sent l’héroïne de _La Passade_ de Willy, qui se tenterait de se faire prendre au sérieux.[28] The last comment is particularly interesting inasmuch as Willy (the novelist Henri Gauthier-Villars, of whom more later) had called the heroine of _La Passade_ “Mona Dupont de Nyewelt,” a name too like Hélène’s to be a matter of chance, considering his notorious penchant for including real persons in his fiction. He described her as a _gamine_ given to roaming the streets of Montmartre at night and tossing pebbles through fanlights for sheer deviltry—altogether, far from innocent. It may have been the critical cold douche of 1904 that kept Vivien silent during 1905 and restricted her output during 1906 and 1907 to a single volume per year, but it was more probably unhappiness. The drift of her personal life is not difficult to discover from poems in _Sillages_ and _Flambeaux Éteints_ of 1908. “Malédiction sur un Jardin” bids the flowers fade, since her love no longer cares to walk among them. “Vêtue” begs the beloved not to discard a gown, but Garde-moi, parfumée ainsi qu’une momie Ta robe des beaux jours passées, o mon amie! “Amata” voices that ultimate plea of the desperate woman which tougher spirits always take for hypocrisy: Dis, que veux-tu de moi qui t’aime, o mon souci! Et comment retenir ton caprice de femme? ... Ton vouloir est mon voeu, ton désir est ma loi, Et si quelque étrangère apparaît plus aimable A tes regards changeants, prends-la, réjouis-toi! Moi même dresserai le lit doux et la table ... Je mets entre tes doigts insouciants mon sort, O toi, douceur finale, o toi, douleur suprême. That this time the defection was not hers, that she had at last attained to her own ideal of self-effacing constancy, seems to have saved Vivien from bitterness. Only one later poem is tinged with it, “Terreur du Mensonge,” in which her resentment is not for the defection itself but for the lie which sought to conceal it. Was this lie perhaps responsible for the gender of “prends-_la_” above? For as was suggested earlier, the “ambiguë” Hélène may have married before the end of 1908. It is certain that, in that year, Vivien prepared the edition of her collected poems which she dedicated to her friend under the new initials. It is also known that she made an unprecedented visit to her family in England, and soon afterward attempted suicide with laudanum. One biographical note[29] mentions that during her last year she was suffering from “Basedow’s disease” (exophthalmic goitre), and such an affliction might seriously depress a hellenic worshipper of physical beauty. But it seems hardly adequate to have made her seek death, without the added burden of emotional despair.