Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/128

 to much, but one sentence impressed itself upon me. I cannot quote it accurately though in substance it was this! 'You cannot speak of a good tree or a bad sunset.' Such words cannot be used in speaking of nature. Therefore in speaking of you, we cannot use the words good or bad either. You are above such words. You are magnificent."

"It is pleasant to be flattered," murmured Madame Leota. "None of us grow so old that we cannot appreciate it. Though we may be misshapen and ugly we yearn to appear lovely. Until the day of her death, a woman wants people to love her. When love ceases, she dies, for love is the food on which the root of her life feeds. All my life I havfe been two women, Louella Leota and Mary Blaine. Occasionally I have changed back and forth. Now Louella Leota ceases to exist forever, and Mary Blaine will settle down to a calm and doddering old age. But Steve Garland said that neither of the lives these two women had led was the life that the gods had intended to be mine. There was another woman hidden within me, the woman I might have been if circumstances had not altered my life. Occasionally, he said, this woman peeped out and it was this woman he painted. Whether he spoke truth or not, who can say? At any rate I wanted to be Louella Leota. She was the woman to whose affairs I gave most attention. Mary Blaine was but a creature in a mist. And that third woman, if she existed, must never be allowed out, else she might have played havoc with my life. Can you imagine how deadly it would have been if she had escaped and it turned out that she was a good woman?"

Madame took a pinch of snuff. She smiled wistfully. "Strange indeed has been my life," she said, "for now that Louella Leota whom I have favored above the others must dissolve and drift away as though she were no more than the mist of moonrise." She paused to sneeze. "I wonder if they will allow me to take snuff in New York," she mused in sudden panic.

"Of course they will," he hastened to assure her, "and anyway, according to your brother's will you will be mistress of the house. If they imagine you tare a queer creature, make all the servants take snuff so that you need not be conspicuous. Seriously, though, if I were you, I wouldn't change my personality in the