Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/194

 wrenched from the dying fingers and flung hastily down.

From this terrible incident the story hastens to its close, remarkable alike for the discourses of the Prince of Darkness, for the experiences of Tempest, for his final severance from the evil genius and his return to honest work. And here it is necessary to consider the conception of his Satanic Majesty with which the author presents us. She states that the idea came to her in the first place from the New Testament: "There I found that Christ was tempted by Satan with the offer of thrones, principalities and powers, all of which the Saviour rejected. When the temptation was over I read that Satan left Him, and that angels came and ministered to Him. I thought this out in my own mind and I concluded that if man, through Christ, would only reject Satan, Satan would leave him, and that angels would minister to him in the same way that they ministered to Christ. Out of this germ rose the wider idea that Satan himself might be glad for men to so reject him, as he then might have the chance of recovering his lost angelic position." In fact, the writer would have it that Satan becomes on terms of intimacy with man, and man then becomes consequently evil, only if man shows that he wishes to travel an evil course; that