Tossing the horrible thing he called his ‘sprite’ off to fly on one of its slow humming circuits round the room, he shook my hand fervently, still smiling,—and I,—feeling instinctively that he was as fully aware of the truth as I was, namely, that had I been a poor author with nothing but what I could earn by my brains, the Lady Sibyl Elton would never have looked at me, much less agreed to marry me,—kept silence lest I should openly betray the reality of my position.
“You see”—he went on, with a cheerful relentlessness—“I was not aware that any old-world romance graced the disposition of one so apparently impassive as your beautiful fiancée. To love for love’s sake only, is becoming really an obsolete virtue. I thought Lady Sibyl was an essentially modern woman, conscious of her position, and the necessity there was for holding that position proudly before the world at all costs,—and that the pretty pastoral sentiments of poetical Phyllises and Amandas had no place in her nature. I was wrong, it seems; and for once I have been mistaken in the fair sex!” Here he stretched out his hand to the ‘sprite,’ that now came winging its way back, and settled at once on its usual resting-place; “My friend, I assure you, if you have won a true woman’s true love, you have a far greater fortune than your millions,—a treasure that none can afford to despise.”
His voice softened,—his eyes grew dreamy and less scornful,—and I looked at him in some astonishment.
“Why Lucio, I thought you hated women?”
“So I do!” he replied quickly—“But do not forget why I hate them! It is because they have all the world’s possibilities of good in their hands, and the majority of them deliberately turn these possibilities to evil. Men are influenced entirely by women, though few of them will own it,—through women they are lifted to heaven or driven to hell. The latter is the favourite course, and the one almost universally adopted.”
[p 210]
His brow darkened, and the lines round his proud mouth grew hard and stern. I watched him for a moment,—then with sudden irrelevance I said—
“Put that abominable ‘sprite’ of yours away, will you? I hate to see you with it!”
“What, my poor Egyptian princess!” he exclaimed with a laugh—“Why so cruel to her Geoffrey? If you had lived in her day, you might have been one of her lovers! She was no doubt a charming person,—I find her charming still! However, to oblige you—” and here, placing the insect in its crystal receptacle he carried it away to the other end of the room. Then, returning towards me slowly, he said—“Who knows what the ‘sprite’ suffered as a woman, Geoffrey! Perhaps she made a rich marriage, and repented it! At anyrate I am sure she is much happier in her present condition!”
“I have no sympathy with such a ghastly fancy,”—I said abruptly—“I only know that she or it is a perfectly loathsome object to me.”
“Well,—some ‘transmigrated’ souls are loathsome objects to look at;”—he declared imperturbably—“When they are deprived of their respectable two-legged fleshly covering, it is extraordinary what a change the inexorable law of Nature makes in them!”