“Power!--Power!” he muttered--“She could not resist it! She would never be swayed by gold,--but power! Her genius would rise to it--her beauty would grow to it like a rose unfolding in the sun! ‘Past youth, and without beauty’ as she says of herself! My God! Compare the tame pink-and-white prettiness of youth with the face of Lotys,--and that prettiness becomes like a cheap advertisement on a hoarding or a match-box! Contrast the perfect features, eyes and hair of the newest social ‘beauty,’--with the magical expression, the glamour in the eyes of Lotys,--and perfection of feature becomes the rankest ugliness! Once in a hundred centuries a woman is born like Lotys, to drive men mad with desire for the unattainable--to fire them with such ambition as should make them emperors of the world, if they had but sufficient courage to snatch their thrones--and yet,--to fill them with such sick despair at their own incompetency and failure, as to turn them into mere children crying for love--for love!--only love! No matter whether worlds are lost, kings killed, and dynasties concluded, love!--only love!--and then death!--as all sufficient for the life of a man! And only just so long as love is denied--just so long we can go on climbing towards the unreachable height of greatness,--then--once we touch love, down we fall, broken-hearted; but--we have had our day!” The room was now in darkness, save for the glimmer of the pale moon through the window panes, and he opened the casement and looked out. There was a faint scent of the sea on the air, and he inhaled its salty odour with a sense of refreshment. “All for Lotys!” he murmured. “Working for Lotys, plotting, planning, scheming for Lotys! The government intimidated,--the ministry cast out,--the throne in peril,--the people in arms,--the city in a blaze,--Revolution and Anarchy doing their wild work broad-cast together,--all for Lotys! Always a woman in it! Search to the very depth of every political imbroglio,--dig out the secret reason of every war that ever was begun or ended in the world,--and there we shall find the love or the hate of a woman at the very core of the business! Some such secrets history knows, and has chronicled,--and some will never be known,--but up to the present there is not even a religion in the world where a Woman is not made the beginning of a God!”