"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! XXVII