y adult life.
And then my manner probably assisted him in his illusion. For I gave--I
believe--no sign of the change that was taking place within me under his
influence. I seemed to be calm, detached, even in my sympathy for
his suffering. For he suffered frightfully. This woman he loved was a
Parisian, he told me. He described her beauty to me, as if in order to
excuse himself for having become the slave to her he was. I suppose she
was very beautiful. He said that she had a physical charm so intense
that few men could resist it, that she was famous throughout Europe for
it. He told me that she was not a good woman. I gathered that she lived
for pleasure, admiration, that she had allowed many men to love her
before he knew her. But she had loved him genuinely. She was not a very
young woman, and she was not a married woman. He said that she was a
woman men loved but did not marry, a woman who was loved by the husbands
of married women, a woman to marry whom would exclude a man from the
society of good women. She had never lived, or thought of living, for
one man till he came into her life. Nor had he ever dreamed of living
for one woman. He had lived to gain experience; she too. But when he met
her--knowing thoroughly all she was--all other women ceased to exist for
him. He became her slave. Then jealousy awoke in him, jealousy of all
the men who had been in her life, who might be in her life again. He was
tortured by loving such a woman--a woman who had belonged to many, who
would no doubt in the future belong to others. For despite the fact that
she loved him he told me that at first he had no illusions about her. He
knew the world too well for that, and he cursed the fate that had bound
him body and soul to what he called a courtesan. Even the fact that she
loved him at first did not blind him to the effect upon character that
her life must inevitably have had. She had dwelt in an atmosphere of
lies, he said, and to lie was nothing to her. Any original refinement
of feeling as regards human relations that she might have had had become
dulled, if it had not been destroyed. At first he blindly, miserably,
resigned himself to this. He said to himself, 'Fate has led me to love
this sort of woman. I must accept her as she is, with all her defects,
with her instinct for treachery, with her passion for the admiration
of the world, with her incapability for being true to an ideal, or for
isolating herself in the adoration of