Pagina 227 de 490

"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty,

more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive

instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves

looking for their masters, all the same. They love being

dominated. I am sure you were splendid. I have never seen you

really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how delightful you

looked. And, after all, you said something to me the day before

yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful,

but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key to

everything."

"What was that, Harry?"

"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the

heroines of romance-that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia

the other; that if she died as Juliet, she came to life as

Imogen."

"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad,

burying his face in his hands.