His erotic appetite, for instance, remained as insatiable as ever. Age did not dull, nor finance wither, that primordial craving. The aphrodisiac instincts in Mortimer Romer were, however, much less simple than might be supposed. In this hyper-sensual region he had more claim to artistic subtlety than his enemies realized. He rarely allowed himself the direct expansion of frank and downright lasciviousness. His little pleasures were indirect, elaborate, far-fetched. He afforded really the interesting spectacle of one whose mind was normal, energetic, dynamic; but whose senses were slow, complicated, fastidious. He was a formidable forward-marching machine, with a heart of elaborate perversity. He was a thick-skinned philistine with the sensuality of a sybarite. I do not mean to imply that there was any lack of rapacity in the senses of Mr. Romer. His senses were indeed unfathomable in their devouring depths. But they were liable to fantastic caprices. They were not the simple animal senses of a Gothic barbarian. They assumed imperial contortions. The main eccentricity of the erotic tendencies of this remarkable man lay in the elaborate pleasure he derived from his sense of power. The actual lure of the flesh had little attraction for him. What pleased him was a slow tightening of his grip upon people--upon their wills, their freedom, their personality. Any impression a person might make upon Mr. Romer’s senses was at once transformed into a desire to have that person absolutely at his mercy. The thought that he held such a one reduced to complete spiritual helplessness alone satisfied him. The first time he had encountered Lacrima Traffio he had been struck by her appealing eyes, her fragile figure, her frightened gestures. Deep in his perverted heart he had desired her; but his desire, under the psychic law I have endeavoured to explain, quickly resolved itself into a resolution to take possession of her, not as his mistress, but as his slave. Nor did the subtle elaboration of his perversity stop there. It were easy and superficial to dominate in his own person so helpless a dependent. What was less easy was to reduce her to submission to the despotic caprices of his daughter, a girl only a few years older than herself. The enjoyment of a sense of vicarious power was a satisfaction curiously provocative to his predatory craving. Nor did subtlety of the situation stop at that point. It was not only necessary that the girl who attracted him should be at his daughter’s mercy; it was necessary that his daughter should not be unconscious of the rôle she herself played. It was necessary that they should be in a sense confederates in this game of cat-and-mouse. As Mr. Romer paced the terrace of his imposing mansion a yet profounder triumph presented itself in the recesses of his imperial nature.