e said at last, "what the world
does not seem to understand, and will not see, is that a girl with a
sister is placed in intimate, daily, and inevitable contact with the
very woman who is her most constant and most formidable rival. She sees
her grow up and gradually assume womanly shape. She watches the
development of every feature with eyes starting out of her head with
horror. While her sister is at the gawky age, she gets a short breathing
space, because a child at that time is so clumsy, so unattractive and
foolish. But all of a sudden this vanishes. The child becomes a woman,
startlingly beautiful and seductive. She realises it herself, and
naturally wants her successes, as Baby did."

"Who's Baby?" Lord Henry interrupted.

"My sister, Leonetta."

"Oh, I see--go on."

"Then you do everything you can to make her feel she is not grown up
yet. But it is hopeless. In vain you try to thrust her back into
childhood----"

"By calling her 'Baby' instead of 'Leonetta,' for instance," said Lord
Henry.

"Oh, of course!" Cleopatra cried. "I didn't think of that." Then she
continued after a while, "But of course they want to shine, and you can
do nothing. You are expected to love them, cherish them; you are even
expected to take an interest in their clothes, in their hair! You even
have to go and help put the finishing touches, when all the time you
dread seeing her dressed up. It is excruciating, it is brutal. It is
inhuman, Lord Henry! Shall I tell you the truth,--though it's dreadful,
wicked. Well, _I hate_ my sister. I loathe her with a deadly loathing.
My fingers itch to--oh, all through the night I think of some means of
disfiguring her. It is the most diabolical cruelty to put any woman into
the position I am in now. I long to fly away, where I shall never, never
see her again. It's that and nothing else that has given me these
fainting fits. I have controlled my loathing too long. One day, if only
fate is kind, I shall fall down and be killed."

She collapsed at the end of this tirade, and burst into a torrent of
tears. There was no affectation about that flood. It was the expression
of real anguish, of long-pent-up suffering, and Lord Henry knew what
infinite good it would do.

"Come, come, Miss Delarayne!" he exclaimed, still fearing that the
humiliation of the discovery, despite the relief it gave, would prove
too much for her immensely proud nature. "I share your secret now. I am
strong. You will feel my