Marie Corelli

“ Love is not a composed thing,” said Gervase, leaning closer to her. “It is wild, and full of libertinage as the sea.”
“And equally as fickle,” added the Princess composedly, taking a fan of feathers near her and waving it to and fro. “Man’s idea of love is to take all he can get from a woman, and give her nothing in return but misery sometimes, and sometimes death.”
“You do not,—you cannot think that!” said Gervase, looking at her dazzling face with a passion of admiration he made no attempt to conceal. “Men on the whole are not as cruel or as treacherous as women. ”

“ Filled with ecstasy at the sight of her wondrous loveliness, he felt nothing of the coldness of death at his heart,—a divine passion inspired him, and with the last effort of his failing strength he strove to gather all the spirit-like beauty of her being into his embrace.
“Love—Love!” he cried. “Not Hate, but Love! Come back out of the darkness, soul of the woman I wronged! Forgive me! Come back to me! Hell or Heaven, what matters it if we are together! Come to me,—come! Love is stronger than Hate!” ”

“ She had loved him as few women have either heart or strength to love, and he had rewarded her fidelity by death and eternal torment! A struggling cry escaped him, and he stretched out his arms:
“Ziska! Forgive—forgive!”
As he uttered the words, he saw her wan face suddenly change,—all the terror and torture passed from it like a passing cloud,—beautiful as an angel’s, it smiled upon him,—the eyes softened and flashed with love, the lips trembled, the spectral form glowed with a living luminance, and a mystic Glory glittered above the dusky hair! ”

“ Denzil Murray flushed uncomfortably.
“Gervase doesn’t believe in anything but Art,” he said, as though half apologizing for his friend: “Art is the sole object of his existence; I don’t believe he ever has time to think about anything else.”
“Of what else should I think, mon ami?” exclaimed Gervase mirthfully. “Of life? It is all Art to me; and by Art I mean the idealization and transfiguration of Nature.”
“Oh, if you do that sort of thing you are a romancist,” interposed Dr. Dean emphatically. “Nature neither idealizes nor transfigures itself; it is simply Nature and no more. ”

“ I am aweary of love, and the world is full of women!’ That is the way of your sex, Monsieur Gervase; it is a brutal way, but it is the one most of you follow.”
“There is such a thing as love!” said Denzil, looking up quickly, a pained flush on his handsome face.
“In the hearts of women, yes!” said Ziska, her voice growing tremulous with strange and sudden passion. “Women love—ah!—with what force and tenderness and utter abandonment of self! But their love is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred utterly wasted; it is a largesse flung to the ungrateful, a jewel tossed in the mire! ”

“ In all these things I have taken pride, and she—she can trample them under her feet and make of me nothing more than man clamoring for woman’s love! What a wild world it is! What a strange Force must that be which created it!—the Force that some men call God and others Devil! A strange, blind, brute Force!—for it makes us aspire only to fall; it gives a man dreams of ambition and splendid attainment only to fling him like a mad fool on a woman’s breast, and bid him find there, and there only, the bewildering sweetness which makes everything else in existence poor and tame in comparison. ”

“ It was no wonder that her tears fell fast, wrung from her with the pain of this double wound; for Helen, though quiet and undemonstrative, had fine feelings and unsounded depths of passion in her nature, and the fatal attraction she felt for Armand Gervase was more powerful than she had herself known. Now that he had openly confessed his infatuation for another woman, it seemed as though the earth had opened at her feet and shown her nothing but a grave in which to fall. Life—empty and blank and bare of love and tenderness, stretched before her imagination ”

“ Or are you made of the same savage and impenitent stuff as composed the once famous yet brutal warrior of old time? Do you admire the character and spirit of Araxes?—he who, if history reports him truly, would snatch a woman’s life as though it were a wayside flower, crush out all its sweetness and delicacy, and then fling it into the dust withered and dead? Do you think that because a man is strong and famous, he has a right to the love of woman?—a charter to destroy her as he pleases? ”

“ Anon she smiled sweetly, and with a bewitching provocativeness.
“Your ‘passion,’ you see, my friend, awakens rather a singular ‘reflex’ in me!—not quite of the nature you imagined!”
He remained for a moment inert; then, with an almost savage boldness, threw his arm about her.
“Have everything your own way, Ziska!” he said in quick, fierce accents. “I will accept all your fancies, and humor all your caprices. I will grant that you do not love me—I will even suppose that I am repellent to you,—but that shall make no difference to my desire! You shall be mine!—willing or unwilling! ”

“ The close and pernicious enthralment of a woman I never met till the night before last; a woman whose face haunts me; a woman who drags me to her side with the force of a magnet, there to grovel like a brain-sick fool and plead with her for a love which I already know is poison to my soul! Helen, Helen! You do not understand—you will never understand! Here, in the very air I breathe, I fancy I can trace the perfume she shakes from her garments as she moves; something indescribably fascinating yet terrible attracts me to her; it is an evil attraction, I know, but I cannot resist it. ”

“ She shall not be Madame Gervase,—oh, no! She shall not be asked to attend to the pot-au-feu; she shall act the rôle for which she has dressed to-night; she shall be another Charmazel to another Araxes, though the wild days of Egypt are no more!”
A sudden shiver ran through him as he spoke, and instinctively he drew the white folds of his picturesque garb closer about him.
“There is a chill wind sweeping in from the desert,” he said, “an evil, sandy breath tasting of mummy-dust blown through the crevices of the tombs of kings. Let us go in.” ”

“ Yes, there was a dim sense of terror lurking behind all the wild passion that filled his soul—a haunting, vague idea that this sudden love, with its glowing ardor and intoxicating delirium, was like the brilliant red sunset which frequently prognosticates a night of storm, ruin and death. Yet, though he felt this presentiment like a creeping shudder of cold through his blood, it did not hold him back, or for a moment impress him with the idea that it might be better to yield no further to this desperate love-madness which enthralled him. ”

“ There is nothing of the heroic in the wandering biped who swings through the streets of Cairo in white flannels, laughing at the staid composure of the Arabs, flicking thumb and finger at the patient noses of the small hireable donkeys and other beasts of burden, thrusting a warm red face of inquiry into the shadowy recesses of odoriferous bazaars, and sauntering at evening in the Esbekiyeh Gardens, cigar in mouth and hands in pockets, looking on the scene and behaving in it as if the whole place were but a reflex of Earl’s Court Exhibition. History affects the cheap tripper not at all ”

“ But towards midnight a Voice suddenly arose as it were like a wind in the desert, crying aloud: “Araxes! Araxes!” and wailing past, sank with a profound echo into the deep recesses of the vast Egyptian tomb. Moonlight and the Hour wove their own mystery; the mystery of a Shadow and a Shape that flitted out like a thin vapor from the very portals of Death’s ancient temple, and drifting forward a few paces resolved itself into the visionary fairness of a Woman’s form—a Woman whose dark hair fell about her heavily, like the black remnants of a long-buried corpse’s wrappings ”

“ Dean, let me introduce to you Armand Gervase; I need not explain him further!"
"You need not, indeed!" said the doctor, with a ceremonious bow. "The name is one of universal celebrity."
"It is not always an advantage—this universal celebrity," replied Gervase. "Nor is it true that any celebrity is actually universal. Perhaps the only living person that is universally known, by name at least, is Zola. Mankind are at one in their appreciation of vice." ”

“ The hot sun glared in his eyes and made them ache,—the rough stones of the narrow street were scorching to his feet. He began to move slowly away with a curious faint sensation of giddiness and sickness upon him, when the sound of music floating from the direction of the Princess Ziska’s palace brought him to a sudden standstill. It was a strange, wild melody, played on some instrument with seemingly muffled strings. A voice with a deep, throbbing thrill of sweetness in it began to sing:
Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily! ”