Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/231



wronged some woman, and suppose that woman had died. You might imagine that you had got rid of that woman. But if her love was very strong and her sense of outrage very bitter, I must tell you that you have not got rid of her by any means; moreover, you never will get rid of her. And why? Because her Soul, like all Souls, is imperishable. Now, putting it as a mere supposition, and for the sake of the argument, that you feel a certain admiration for the Princess Ziska, an admiration which might possibly deepen into something more than platonic, "—here Denzil Murray looked up, his eyes glowing with an angry pain as he fixed them on Gervase,—"why, then the Soul of the other woman you once wronged might come between you and the face of the new attraction and cause you to unconsciously paint the tortured look of the injured and unforgiving Spirit on the countenance of the lovely fascinator whose charms are just beginning to ensnare you. I repeat, I have known such cases."

For it should be explained that, when Ziska gave the celebrated painter a sitting, he could produce nothing on his canvas, in spite of his genius, but a strange and awful face distorted with passion and pain, agony in every line of the features—"agony in which the traces of a divine beauty lingered only to render the whole countenance more repellent and terrific."

Dr. Dean quickly comes to the conclusion, and very reasonably, that this is the most interesting problem he has ever had a chance of studying.