the photograph. She murmured in Mlle. Vinteuil's ear something
that I could not distinguish.

"Oh! You would never dare."

"Not dare to spit on it? On that?" shouted the friend with deliberate
brutality.

I heard no more, for Mlle. Vinteuil, who now seemed weary, awkward,
preoccupied, sincere, and rather sad, came back to the window and drew
the shutters close; but I knew now what was the reward that M. Vinteuil,
in return for all the suffering that he had endured in his lifetime, on
account of his daughter, had received from her after his death.

And yet I have since reflected that if M. Vinteuil had been able to be
present at this scene, he might still, and in spite of everything, have
continued to believe in his daughter's soundness of heart, and that he
might even, in so doing, have been not altogether wrong. It was true
that in all Mlle. Vinteuil's actions the appearance of evil was so
strong and so consistent that it would have been hard to find it
exhibited in such completeness save in what is nowadays called a
'sadist'; it is behind the footlights of a Paris theatre, and not under
the homely lamp of an actual country house, that one expects to see a
girl leading her friend on to spit upon the portrait of a father who has
lived and died for nothing and no one but herself; and when we find in
real life a desire for melodramatic effect, it is generally the 'sadic'
instinct that is responsible for it. It is possible that, without being
in the least inclined towards 'sadism,' a girl might have shewn the
same outrageous cruelty as Mlle. Vinteuil in desecrating the memory and
defying the wishes of her dead father, but she would not have given them
deliberate expression in an act so crude in its symbolism, so lacking
in subtlety; the criminal element in her behaviour would have been less
evident to other people, and even to herself, since she would not have
admitted to herself that she was doing wrong. But, appearances apart, in
Mlle. Vinteuil's soul, at least in the earlier stages, the evil element
was probably not unmixed. A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil,
which a wholly wicked person could not be, for in that case the evil
would not have been external, it would have seemed quite natural to her,
and would not even have been distinguishable from herself; and as for
virtue, respect for the dead, filial obedience, since she would never
have practised the cult of these things, she would take no impious
deli