E. Phillips Oppenheim

“ I shudder when I think to what misery I might have brought you, if I had yielded to that sweetest and most fascinating impulse of my life, which bade me accept your sacrifice and come to you. Berenice, you are very young yet, and you have woven some new and very beautiful fancies which you have put into a book, and which the world has found amusing! To you alone they have become the essence of your life: they have become by constant contemplation a part of yourself. Out of the greatness of your heart you do not fear to put them into practice! ”

“ As he passed the corner of a street, the perfume of Neapolitan violets came floating out from a florist’s shop upon the warm sunlit air. Every fibre of his being quivered with a sudden emotion! The interior of that little room was before him, and a woman’s eyes looked into his. He clenched his hands and walked swiftly on, with pale face and rigid lips, like a man oppressed by some acute physical pain.
There must be nothing of this for him! It was part of a world which was not his world—of which he must never even be a temporary denizen. The thing passed away! ”

“ You forget that I am almost an old woman. The religion of my life has long been conceived and fashioned.”
He looked at her with a curious smile. If thirty seemed old to her, what must she think of him?
“I wonder,” he said simply, “if you would think me impertinent if I were to ask you to tell me more about yourself. How is it that you are altogether alone in the world?”
The words had scarcely left his lips before he would have given much to have recalled them. He saw her start, flinch back as though she had been struck, and a grey pallor spread itself over her face, almost to the lips. ”

“ There spoke the whole selfishness of the philosopher, the dilettante in morals! What is it that you fear? It is the besmirchment of your own ideals, your own little code framed and moulded with your own hands. What do you know of sin or of purity, you, who have held yourself aloof from the world with a sort of delicate care, as though you, forsooth, were too precious a thing to be soiled with the dust of human passion and human love! ”

“ I would not play Herdrine again for worlds.”
“I am very glad to hear you say so,” he said, smiling. “Do you know that to me the most interesting feature of the play was its obvious effect upon this man. Its extreme pessimism is too much paraded, is laid on altogether with too thick a hand to ring true. The thing is an involved nightmare. One feels that as a work of art it is never convincing, yet underneath it all there must be something human, for it found its way into the heart of one man.” ”

“ To him, so great a stranger to women and their ways, there was a curious fascination in all the trifling details of her toilette and person, the innate daintiness of which appealed to him with a very potent and insidious sweetness. Whilst she slept, he felt as one far removed from her. It was like a beautiful picture upon which he was gazing. The passion which had been raging within him like an autumn storm was suddenly stilled. ”

“ But, dear, you must find a new world to fit your fancies, for the one in which we are forced to dwell, the world which, in theory, finds them delightful, [Pg 218] would find another and an uglier world if we should venture upon their embodiment! After all we are creatures of this world, and by this world’s laws we shall be judged. The things which are right are right, and the things which are pure are pure. Love is the greatest power in the world, but it cannot alter things which are unalterable. ”

“ Berenice, if you were alone in the world, and there was some great barrier to our marriage, I would not hesitate any longer. I would take you to myself. Don’t think too hardly of me. I am like a man who is denying himself heaven. But your husband lives. You belong to him. You do not know whether he is in prosperity, or whether he has forgotten. ”

“ Matravers smiled gravely as he took his seat in the box and looked out with some wonder at the ill-lit, half-empty theatre.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that I am very much out of place here, yet do not imagine [Pg 10] that I bring with me any personal bias whatever. I know nothing of the play, and Isteinism is merely a phrase to me. To-night I have no individuality. I am a critic.”
“So much depends,” Ellison remarked, “upon the point of view. I am afraid that you are the last man in the world to have any sympathy with the decadent.” ”

“ The whole [Pg 95] world of our sex as well as yours is full of worn-out and effete reproductions of an unworthy model. It is this intolerable sameness which suffocates all thought. One meets it everywhere; the deep melancholy of our days is its fruit. But the children of this generation will never feel it. The taste of life between their teeth will be neither like ashes nor green figs. ”

“ Lately, I can’t bear to be alone with Freddy. He’s so damned like his mother, you know. It brings a lump in my throat. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were only myself. I’ve had my cake! But it’s rough on the boy!”
“It is rough on the boy, and it is rough on you,” Matravers said kindly. “I wonder you have never thought of sending him to his mother! She would surely like to have him!”
The man’s face grew black.
“Not till I’m dead,” he said doggedly. “I don’t want him set against me! He’s all I’ve got! I’m going to keep him for a bit. It ought not to be so difficult for us to live. ”

“ You do not wish to be known only as the portrayer of unnatural passions, the interpreter of diseased desires. It would be an ephemeral reputation. It might lead you into many strange byways, but it would never help you to rise. Art is above all things catholic, and universal. You may be a perfect Herdrine; but Herdrine herself is but a night weed—a thing of no account. Even you cannot make her natural. ”

“ I sit here with my face to the morning, and I seem to see a new life stretching out before me. Is not love a beautiful thing! I am not ambitious any more. I do not want any other object in life than to make you happy, and to be made happy by you. ”

“ Berenice, you are that flower! You are beautiful, and pure, and strong! You think that you are strong enough to live in the lowlands, but you are not! No love of mine, changeless and whole as it must ever be, could keep your soul from withering in the nether land of sin! ”

“ Leave your husband out of the question—put every other consideration on one side, Freddy’s eyes must have kept us apart for ever.
“And, dear, it is your boy’s future, and the care of your stricken husband, which must bring you into closer and more intimate touch with the vast world of human sorrows. Love is a sacrifice, and life is a sacrifice. I know, and that knowledge is the comfort of my last sad night on earth, [Pg 254] that you will find your rightful place amongst her toiling daughters. And it is because there is no fitting place for me by your side that I am very well content to die. ”

“ Berenice must be a most abandoned, as well as a most immoral, woman! No one who even hinted at the doctrine of love without marriage could be altogether respectable. Not that Berenice had ever done that. Still, she had written of marriage,—the usual run of marriages,—from a woman’s point of view, as a very hateful thing. What did she require, then, of her sex? To live and die old maids, whilst men became regenerated? It was too absurd. There were a good many curious things said, and it was certainly true, that since she had gone upon the stage her toilette and equipage were unrivalled. ”