Marie Corelli

“ She smiled frankly up into his eyes as she spoke, and her spiritualised loveliness thrilled him with sudden surprise.
“It is I who must thank you for coming,” he answered, very gently. “I know how keenly you are now attuned to Nature—you have the light of the sun in your blood and force of the air in your veins, and whether you admit it or not, you enjoy your life without consciousness of joy! Strange!—but true!—yet—Diana—believe me, I want you to be happy!—not only to ‘suppose’ yourself happy! Your whole being must radiate like the sunlight, of which it is now in part composed.” ”

“ You became the wife of a clever man,—he died, having fulfilled his destiny in giving you—may I say so?—a clever son,—myself! What more can any woman ask of ordinary nature?”
He laughed gaily, and putting his arm round his mother, fondled her as if she were a child.
“Yes, beloved!—you have done all your duty!” he went on. “But you have sacrificed your own identity—the thing that Miss Diana calls her ‘significance.’ You lost that willingly when you married—all women lose it when they marry:—and you have never quite found it again. ”

“ The magnetism of sex is the thing that ‘pulls’—but you—you, my ‘subject,’ have no sex! That’s what nobody outside ourselves is likely to understand. The ‘love’ which is purely physical,—the mating which has for its object the breeding of children, is not for you any more than it would be for an angel—you are removed from its material and sensual contact. But the love which should touch your soul to immortal issues, and which by its very character is expressed through youth and beauty,—that may come to you!—that may be yours in due time! ”

“ He started back, amazed at her voice and attitude.
“A goddess—a goddess!” she repeated, triumphantly. “Young with a youth that shall not change—alive with a life that shall not die! Out of the fire and the air I have absorbed the essence of all beauty and power!—what shall trouble me? Not the things of this little querulous world!—not its peevish men and women!—I am above them all! Féodor Dimitrius, your science has gathered strange fruit from the Tree of Life, but remember!—the Flaming Sword turns every way!” ”

“ Man lives in some wrong, mistaken way—the real joy of life must be to dwell on earth like a ray of light, warming and fructifying all things unconsciously—coming from the sun and returning again to the sun, never losing a moment of perfect splendour!”
“But, to have no consciousness is death,” said Dimitrius. “A ray of light is indifferent to joy. Consciousness with intelligence makes happiness.”
She was silent.
“You are well?” he asked, gently.
“Perfectly!”
“And happy?”
“I suppose so.”
“You cannot do more than suppose? People will hardly understand you if you can only ‘suppose’ you are happy!” ”

“ Diana demurred.
“No, don’t say that!” she expostulated. “You must bear in mind that I’ve been a terrible disappointment to them. They wanted me to marry well,—for money rather than love—and when I wasted my youth for love’s sake, of course they were angry. They thought me a fool,—and really, so I was! I don’t think there can be anything more foolish than to sacrifice the best part of one’s life for any man. He is never worth it,—he never understands or appreciates it. To him women are all alike,—one as good or as bad as t’other. The mistake we make is when we fail to treat him as he treats us! ”

“ But you are a sensible woman, and you are old enough now to realise that we are better apart.”
“You are old enough now,” was the phrase that jarred upon Diana’s inward sense, like the ugly sound of a clanking chain in a convict’s cell. “You are old enough now.” Well, it was true!—she was “old enough,”—but she had taken this “oldness” upon her while faithfully waiting for her lover. And he had been the first to punish her for her constancy! It was very strange. Indeed, it was one of those many things that had brought her to her chronic state of wonderment. ”

“ And Madame Dimitrius’s pale blue eyes opened a little wider. “What a strange thing to say! You are full of feeling!”
Diana shook her head decisively.
“No, I’m not! It’s all put on! It is, really! That is, so far as human beings and human events are concerned. I feel nothing whatever about them! The only ‘feeling’ I have is a sort of suppressed ecstasy of delight in beauty—the beauty of the skies, the effects of sunlight on the hills and plains, the loveliness of a flower or a bit of exquisite natural scenery—but I have somehow lost the sense of all association with humanity!” ”

“ Most of us, as we get on in life, lose father and mother, home, and even lover!—but that we should lose youth, beauty and hope is quite our own affair! We ought to know better!” She looked at him in surprise.
“How should we know better?” she asked. “Age must come,—and with age the wrinkling and spoiling of all beautiful faces, to say nothing of the aches and pains and ailments common to a general break-up of the body-cells. We cannot defy the law of Nature.”
“That is precisely what we are always doing!” said Dimitrius. “And that is why we make such trouble for ourselves. ”

“ I have a splendid salary—a thousand a year!—just think of it!—a thousand Pounds, not Francs!—and a perfectly enchanting home, with every comfort and luxury. I am indeed ‘dead’ as the poor solitary woman who devoted her soul to the service of ‘Pa’ and ‘Ma’; a new Diana May has sprung from the ashes of the old spinster!—it is exactly as if I had really died and been born again! All the world seems new; I breathe the air of a delicious and intelligent freedom such as I have never known. ”

“ No, no!”—this, as Diana, with her beautiful smile of uplifted sweetness and tolerance, strove to speak—“Nothing you can say will alter it! It is impossible that such a thing could be done without rebellion against the laws of God! You—you are not Diana May—you are some other creature, not made of flesh and blood!”
Diana heard her with a gentle patience.
“Very possibly you are right,” she said, quietly. “But whatever I am made of must be some of God’s own material, since there is nothing existent without Him! Why, even if there is a devil, the devil himself cannot exist apart from God!” ”

“ A mere lump of sensuality!—a man who considers no principle save that of his own pleasure, and has no tenderness or memory for me as the ‘old’ spinster whom he thought (and still thinks) was drowned in Devon!—what is he to me but an utterly contemptible atom!—and yet—the only sentiment I seem to be capable of now is hate!—undying hate, the antithesis of the once undying love I bore him! The revolt of my soul against him is like a revolt of light against darkness! Is he not punished enough by the gross and commonplace domestic life he has made for himself! ”

“ The lovely house was thrown open to the usual callers and neighbours,—people came and went,—the gardens, glorious now with a wealth of blossom, were the favourite resort of many visitors to Madame Dimitrius and her son,—and Diana, looking from her pretty salon through one of the windows which had so deep an embrasure that she could see everything without any fear of herself being discovered, often watched groups of men and smartly attired women strolling over the velvety lawns or down the carefully kept paths among the flowers, though always with a curious lack of interest. ”

“ Had not Dimitrius promised that if he succeeded in his experiment, youth would be hers again?—youth, united to experience?—but would that be a desirable result? She wondered.
“The old, old story!” she sighed. “The old legend of Faust and the devil!—the thirst of mankind for a longer extension of youth and life!—only, in my case, I have not asked for these things, nor have I tried to summon up the devil. I am just an unwanted woman,—unwanted so far as the world is concerned, but useful just now as a ‘subject’ for the recharging of cells!” ”

“ But Science is a terrible thing!—it is a realisation more or less of the Egyptian Sphinx—a sort of monster with the face of a spirit and the body of an animal. Science, dear Madame—please don’t look so frightened—has lately taught men more about killing each other than curing! It also tells us that nothing is, or can be lost; all sights and sounds are garnered up in the treasure-houses of air and space. The forms and faces of human creatures long dead are about us,—the aura of their personalities remains though their bodies have perished. ”

“ The vision of the radiant eyes, the exquisite features, the rose-leaf skin, and the supple, graceful form of the marvellous Diana who so persistently declared herself to be his former betrothed, floated before him in tempting, tantalising beauty,—and as he opened his own house-door with his latch-key to enter that abode of domestic bliss where his unwieldy wife talked commonplaces all day long and bored him to death, he uttered something like a groan.
“Whatever her fancy or craze may be,” he said, “she is young! Young and perfectly beautiful! It is I who am old!” ”

“ To-day in Paris one of the loveliest women in the world holds undisputed sway as a reigning beauty. The “old,” now the “young” Diana is the envy of her sex and the despair of men. Years pass over her and leave no change in her fair face or radiant eyes,—a creature of light and magnetic force, she lives for the most part the life of a student and recluse, and any entertaining of society in her house is rare, though the men of learning and science who were friends of Professor Chauvet are always welcomed by their adorable hostess, who to them has become a centre of something like worship. ”

“ The elements that commingle to make this Universe and all that is therein, are the real ‘bread and wine’ of God’s love!—and whoever can and will absorb such food may well ‘preserve body and soul unto everlasting life.’ Such is the great union of Spirit with Matter—such is the truth after which the Churches have been blindly groping in their symbolic ‘holy communion’ feebly materialised in ‘bread and wine’ as God’s ‘body and blood.’ But the actual ‘body and blood’ of the Divine are the ever-changing but never destructible elements of all positive Life and Consciousness. ”

“ With what elements has it commingled to make more men as wise, as foolish, as sane, or as mad as the generations passed away? The splendour, the riches, the conquests, the glories of these cities were as great or greater than any that modern civilisation can boast of—and yet—what remains? Dust? And is the dust necessary and valuable? Who can tell! Who knows!”
“And with all the mystery and uncertainty, is it not better to trust in God?” said Madame Dimitrius, gently. “Perhaps the little child who says ‘Our Father’ is nearer to Divine Truth than all the science of the world.” ”

“ This woman, Diana May, is a stranger, and nothing to you. Certainly she is a kind, bright creature, with a great many undeveloped gifts of brain and character, which make her all the more useful to me. I give her as much chance as I give myself. If I let her alone,—that is to say, if I ignore all the reasons for which I engaged her, and allow her to become a mere secretary, or your domestic companion,—she goes on in the usual way of a woman of her years,—withering slowly—sinking deeper in the ruts of care, and fading into a nonentity for whom life is scarcely worth the living. ”

“ The widest of these was folded over and over across the breast, binding in the arms and hands, and as this was undone, the faintest stir of the body was perceptible. At last Dimitrius uncovered the face and head—and then—both he and Vasho sprang up and started back, amazed and awestruck. Never a lovelier thing could be found on earth than the creature which lay so passively before them,—a young girl of beauty so exquisite that it hardly seemed human. The goddess of a poet’s dream might be so imagined, but never a mere thing of flesh and blood. ”