Somerset maughan

La 
Gioconda
which hung on the wall. Suddenly he began to speak. He 
recited the honeyed words with which Walter Pater expressed his 
admiration for that consummate picture. 
'Hers is the head upon which all the ends of the world are come, and 
the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within 
upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and 
fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside 
one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of 
antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into 
which the soul with all its maladies has passed. All the thoughts and 
experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that 
which they have of power to refine and make expressive the 
outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the 
mysticism of the Middle Ages, with its spiritual ambition and 
imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the 
Borgias.' 
His voice, poignant and musical, blended with the suave music of 
the words so that Margaret felt she had never before known their 
divine significance. She was intoxicated with their beauty. She 
wished him to continue, but had not the strength to speak. As if he 

---

guessed her thought, he went on, and now his voice had a richness 
in it as of an organ heard afar off. It was like an overwhelming 
fragrance and she could hardly bear it. 
'She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, 
she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; 
and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about 
her; and trafficked for strange evils with Eastern merchants; and, as 
Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the 
mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of 
lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has 
moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the 
hands.' 
Oliver Haddo began then to speak of Leonardo da Vinci, mingling 
with his own fantasies the perfect words of that essay which, so 
wonderful was his memory, he seemed to know by heart. He found 
exotic fancies in the likeness between Saint John the Baptist, with his 
soft flesh and waving hair, and Bacchus, with his ambiguous smile. 
Seen through his eyes, the seashore in the Saint Anne had the airless 
lethargy of some damasked chapel in a Spanish nunnery, and over 
the landscapes brooded a wan spirit of evil that was very troubling. 
He loved the mysterious pictures in which the painter had sought to 
express something beyond the limits of painting, something of 
unsatisfied desire and of longing for unhuman passions. Oliver 
Haddo found this quality in unlikely places, and his words gave a 
new meaning to paintings that Margaret had passed thoughtlessly 
by. There was the portrait of a statuary by Bronzino in the Long 
Gallery of the Louvre. The features were rather large, the face rather 
broad. The expression was sombre, almost surly in the repose of the 
painted canvas, and the eyes were brown, almond-shaped like those 
of an Oriental; the red lips were exquisitely modelled, and the 
sensuality was curiously disturbing; the dark, chestnut hair, cut 
short, curled over the head with an infinite grace. The skin was like 
ivory softened with a delicate carmine. There was in that beautiful 
countenance more than beauty, for what most fascinated the 
observer was a supreme and disdainful indifference to the passion 
of others. It was a vicious face, except that beauty could never be 
quite vicious; it was a cruel face, except that indolence could never 
be quite cruel. It was a face that haunted you, and yet your 

---

admiration was alloyed with an unreasoning terror. The hands were 
nervous and adroit, with long fashioning fingers; and you felt that at 
their touch the clay almost moulded itself into gracious forms. With 
Haddo's subtle words the character of that man rose before her, 
cruel yet indifferent, indolent and passionate, cold yet sensual; 
unnatural secrets dwelt in his mind, and mysterious crimes, and a 
lust for the knowledge that was arcane. Oliver Haddo was attracted 
by all that was unusual, deformed, and monstrous, by the pictures 
that represented the hideousness of man or that reminded you of his 
mortality. He summoned before Margaret the whole array of 
Ribera's ghoulish dwarfs, with their cunning smile, the insane light 
of their eyes, and their malice: he dwelt with a horrible fascination 
upon their malformations, the humped backs, the club feet, the 
hydrocephalic heads. He described the picture by Valdes Leal, in a 
certain place at Seville, which represents a priest at the altar; and the 
altar is sumptuous with gilt and florid carving. He wears a 
magnificent cope and a surplice of exquisite lace, but he wears them 
as though their weight was more than he could bear; and in the 
meagre trembling hands, and in the white, ashen face, in the dark 
hollowness of the eyes, there is a bodily corruption that is terrifying. 
He seems to hold together with difficulty the bonds of the flesh, but 
with no eager yearning of the soul to burst its prison, only with 
despair; it is as if the Lord Almighty had forsaken him and the high 
heavens were empty of their solace. All the beauty of life appears 
forgotten, and there is nothing in the world but decay. A ghastly 
putrefaction has attacked already the living man; the worms of the 
grave, the piteous horror of mortality, and the darkness before him 
offer naught but fear. Beyond, dark night is seen and a turbulent 
sea, the dark night of the soul of which the mystics write, and the 
troublous sea of life whereon there is no refuge for the weary and 
the sick at heart. 
Then, as if in pursuance of a definite plan, he analysed with a 
searching, vehement intensity the curious talent of the modern 
Frenchman, Gustave Moreau. Margaret had lately visited the 
Luxembourg, and his pictures were fresh in her memory. She had 
found in them little save a decorative arrangement marred by faulty 
drawing; but Oliver Haddo gave them at once a new, esoteric 
import. Those effects as of a Florentine jewel, the clustered colours, 
emerald and ruby, the deep blue of sapphires, the atmosphere of 

---

scented chambers, the mystic persons who seem ever about secret, 
religious rites, combined in his cunning phrases to create, as it were, 
a pattern on her soul of morbid and mysterious intricacy. Those 
pictures were filled with a strange sense of sin, and the mind that 
contemplated them was burdened with the decadence of Rome and 
with the passionate vice of the Renaissance; and it was tortured, too, 
by all the introspection of this later day. 
Margaret listened, rather breathlessly, with the excitement of an 
explorer before whom is spread the plain of an undiscovered 
continent. The painters she knew spoke of their art technically, and 
this imaginative appreciation was new to her. She was horribly 
fascinated by the personality that imbued these elaborate sentences. 
Haddo's eyes were fixed upon hers, and she responded to his words 
like a delicate instrument made for recording the beatings of the 
heart. She felt an extraordinary languor. At last he stopped. 
Margaret neither moved nor spoke. She might have been under a 
spell. It seemed to her that she had no power in her limbs. 
'I want to do something for you in return for what you have done 
for me,' he said. 
He stood up and went to the piano. 
'Sit in this chair,' he said. 
She did not dream of disobeying. He began to play. Margaret was 
hardly surprised that he played marvellously. Yet it was almost 
incredible that those fat, large hands should have such a tenderness 
of touch. His fingers caressed the notes with a peculiar suavity, and 
he drew out of the piano effects which she had scarcely thought 
possible. He seemed to put into the notes a troubling, ambiguous 
passion, and the instrument had the tremulous emotion of a human 
being. It was strange and terrifying. She was vaguely familiar with 
the music to which she listened; but there was in it, under his 
fingers, an exotic savour that made it harmonious with all that he 
had said that afternoon. His memory was indeed astonishing. He 
had an infinite tact to know the feeling that occupied Margaret's 
heart, and what he chose seemed to be exactly that which at the 
moment she imperatively needed. Then he began to play things she 
did not know. It was music the like of which she had never heard, 

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barbaric, with a plaintive weirdness that brought to her fancy the 
moonlit nights of desert places, with palm trees mute in the 
windless air, and tawny distances. She seemed to know tortuous 
narrow streets, white houses of silence with strange moon-shadows, 
and the glow of yellow light within, and the tinkling of uncouth 
instruments, and the acrid scents of Eastern perfumes. It was like a 
procession passing through her mind of persons who were not 
human, yet existed mysteriously, with a life of vampires. Mona Lisa 
and Saint John the Baptist, Bacchus and the mother of Mary, went 
with enigmatic motions. But the daughter of Herodias raised her 
hands as though, engaged for ever in a mystic rite, to invoke 
outlandish gods. Her face was very pale, and her dark eyes were 
sleepless; the jewels of her girdle gleamed with sombre fires; and 
her dress was of colours that have long been lost. The smile, in 
which was all the sorrow of the world and all its wickedness, beheld 
the wan head of the Saint, and with a voice that was cold with the 
coldness of death she murmured the words of the poet: 
'I am amorous of thy body, Iokanaan! Thy body is white like the 
lilies of a field that the mower hath never mowed. Thy body is white 
like the snows that lie on the mountains of Judea, and come down 
into the valleys. The roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia are 
not so white as thy body. Neither the roses in the garden of the 
Queen of Arabia, the garden of spices of the Queen of Arabia, nor 
the feet of the dawn when they light on the leaves, nor the breast of 
the moon when she lies on the breast of the sea… There is nothing in 
the world so white as thy body. Suffer me to touch thy body.' 
Oliver Haddo ceased to play. Neither of them stirred. At last 
Margaret sought by an effort to regain her self-control. 
'I shall begin to think that you really are a magician,' she said, 
lightly. 
'I could show you strange things if you cared to see them,' he 
answered, again raising his eyes to hers. 
'I don't think you will ever get me to believe in occult philosophy,' 
she laughed. 

---

'Yet it reigned in Persia with the magi, it endowed India with 
wonderful traditions, it civilised Greece to the sounds of Orpheus's 
lyre.' 
He stood before Margaret, towering over her in his huge bulk; and 
there was a singular fascination in his gaze. It seemed that he spoke 
only to conceal from her that he was putting forth now all the power 
that was in him. 
'It concealed the first principles of science in the calculations of 
Pythagoras. It established empires by its oracles, and at its voice 
tyrants grew pale upon their thrones. It governed the minds of some 
by curiosity, and others it ruled by fear.' 
His voice grew very low, and it was so seductive that Margaret's 
brain reeled. The sound of it was overpowering like too sweet a 
fragrance. 
I tell you that for this art nothing is impossible. It commands the 
elements, and knows the language of the stars, and directs the 
planets in their courses. The moon at its bidding falls blood-red 
from the sky. The dead rise up and form into ominous words the 
night wind that moans through their skulls. Heaven and Hell are in 
its province; and all forms, lovely and hideous; and love and hate. 
With Circe's wand it can change men into beasts of the field, and to 
them it can give a monstrous humanity. Life and death are in the 
right hand and in the left of him who knows its secrets. It confers 
wealth by the transmutation of metals and immortality by its 
quintessence.' 
Margaret could not hear what he said. A gradual lethargy seized her 
under his baleful glance, and she had not even the strength to wish 
to free herself. She seemed bound to him already by hidden chains. 
'If you have powers, show them,' she whispered, hardly conscious 
that she spoke. 
Suddenly he released the enormous tension with which he held her. 
Like a man who has exerted all his strength to some end, the victory 
won, he loosened his muscles, with a faint sigh of exhaustion. 
Margaret did not speak, but she knew that something horrible was 

---

about to happen. Her heart beat like a prisoned bird, with helpless 
flutterings, but it seemed too late now to draw back. Her words by a 
mystic influence had settled something beyond possibility of recall. 
On the stove was a small bowl of polished brass in which water was 
kept in order to give a certain moisture to the air. Oliver Haddo put 
his hand in his pocket and drew out a little silver box. He tapped it, 
with a smile, as a man taps a snuff-box, and it opened. He took an 
infinitesimal quantity of a blue powder that it contained and threw 
it on the water in the brass bowl. Immediately a bright flame sprang 
up, and Margaret gave a cry of alarm. Oliver looked at her quickly 
and motioned her to remain still. She saw that the water was on fire. 
It was burning as brilliantly, as hotly, as if it were common gas; and 
it burned with the same dry, hoarse roar. Suddenly it was 
extinguished. She leaned forward and saw that the bowl was empty. 
The water had been consumed, as though it were straw, and not a 
drop remained. She passed her hand absently across her forehead. 
'But water cannot burn,' she muttered to herself. 
It seemed that Haddo knew what she thought, for he smiled 
strangely. 
'Do you know that nothing more destructive can be invented than 
this blue powder, and I have enough to burn up all the water in 
Paris? Who dreamt that water might burn like chaff?' 
He paused, seeming to forget her presence. He looked thoughtfully 
at the little silver box. 
'But it can be made only in trivial quantities, at enormous expense 
and with exceeding labour; it is so volatile that you cannot keep it 
for three days. I have sometimes thought that with a little ingenuity 
I might make it more stable, I might so modify it that, like radium, it 
lost no strength as it burned; and then I should possess the greatest 
secret that has ever been in the mind of man. For there would be no 
end of it. It would continue to burn while there was a drop of water 
on the earth, and the whole world would be consumed. But it would 
be a frightful thing to have in one's hands; for once it were cast upon 

---

the waters, the doom of all that existed would be sealed beyond 
repeal.' 
He took a long breath, and his eyes glittered with a devilish ardour. 
His voice was hoarse with overwhelming emotion. 
'Sometimes I am haunted by the wild desire to have seen the great 
and final scene when the irrevocable flames poured down the river, 
hurrying along the streams of the earth, searching out the moisture 
in all growing things, tearing it even from the eternal rocks; when 
the flames poured down like the rushing of the wind, and all that 
lived fled from before them till they came to the sea; and the sea 
itself was consumed in vehement fire.' 
Margaret shuddered, but she did not think the man was mad. She 
had ceased to judge him. He took one more particle of that atrocious 
powder and put it in the bowl. Again he thrust his hand in his 
pocket and brought out a handful of some crumbling substance that 
might have been dried leaves, leaves of different sorts, broken and 
powdery. There was a trace of moisture in them still, for a low flame 
sprang up immediately at the bottom of the dish, and a thick vapour 
filled the room. It had a singular and pungent odour that Margaret 
did not know. It was difficult to breathe, and she coughed. She 
wanted to beg Oliver to stop, but could not. He took the bowl in his 
hands and brought it to her. 
'Look,' he commanded. 
She bent forward, and at the bottom saw a blue fire, of a peculiar 
solidity, as though it consisted of molten metal. It was not still, but 
writhed strangely, like serpents of fire tortured by their own 
unearthly ardour. 
'Breathe very deeply.' 
She did as he told her. A sudden trembling came over her, and 
darkness fell across her eyes. She tried to cry out, but could utter no 
sound. Her brain reeled. It seemed to her that Haddo bade her cover 
her face. She gasped for breath, and it was as if the earth spun under 
her feet. She appeared to travel at an immeasurable speed. She made 
a slight movement, and Haddo told her not to look round. An 

---

immense terror seized her. She did not know whither she was 
borne, and still they went quickly, quickly; and the hurricane itself 
would have lagged behind them. At last their motion ceased; and 
Oliver was holding her arm. 
'Don't be afraid,' he said. 'Open your eyes and stand up.' 
The night had fallen; but it was not the comfortable night that 
soothes the troubled minds of mortal men; it was a night that 
agitated the soul mysteriously so that each nerve in the body 
tingled. There was a lurid darkness which displayed and yet 
distorted the objects that surrounded them. No moon shone in the 
sky, but small stars appeared to dance on the heather, vague night-
fires like spirits of the damned. They stood in a vast and troubled 
waste, with huge stony boulders and leafless trees, rugged and 
gnarled like tortured souls in pain. It was as if there had been a 
devastating storm, and the country reposed after the flood of rain 
and the tempestuous wind and the lightning. All things about them 
appeared dumbly to suffer, like a man racked by torments who has 
not the strength even to realize that his agony has ceased. Margaret 
heard the flight of monstrous birds, and they seemed to whisper 
strange things on their passage. Oliver took her hand. He led her 
steadily to a cross-road, and she did not know if they walked amid 
rocks or tombs. 
She heard the sound of a trumpet, and from all parts, strangely 
appearing where before was nothing, a turbulent assembly surged 
about her. That vast empty space was suddenly filled by shadowy 
forms, and they swept along like the waves of the sea, crowding 
upon one another's heels. And it seemed that all the mighty dead 
appeared before her; and she saw grim tyrants, and painted 
courtesans, and Roman emperors in their purple, and sultans of the 
East. All those fierce evil women of olden time passed by her side, 
and now it was Mona Lisa and now the subtle daughter of 
Herodias. And Jezebel looked out upon her from beneath her 
painted brows, and Cleopatra turned away a wan, lewd face; and 
she saw the insatiable mouth and the wanton eyes of Messalina, and 
Fustine was haggard with the eternal fires of lust. She saw cardinals 
in their scarlet, and warriors in their steel, gay gentlemen in 
periwigs, and ladies in powder and patch. And on a sudden, like 

---

leaves by the wind, all these were driven before the silent throngs of 
the oppressed; and they were innumerable as the sands of the sea. 
Their thin faces were earthy with want and cavernous from disease, 
and their eyes were dull with despair. They passed in their tattered 
motley, some in the fantastic rags of the beggars of Albrecht Dürer 
and some in the grey cerecloths of Le Nain; many wore the blouses 
and the caps of the rabble in France, and many the dingy, smoke-
grimed weeds of English poor. And they surged onward like a 
riotous crowd in narrow streets flying in terror before the mounted 
troops. It seemed as though all the world were gathered there in 
strange confusion. 
Then all again was void; and Margaret's gaze was riveted upon a 
great, ruined tree that stood in that waste place, alone, in ghastly 
desolation; and though a dead thing, it seemed to suffer a more than 
human pain. The lightning had torn it asunder, but the wind of 
centuries had sought in vain to drag up its roots. The tortured 
branches, bare of any twig, were like a Titan's arms, convulsed with 
intolerable anguish. And in a moment she grew sick with fear, for a 
change came into the tree, and the tremulousness of life was in it; 
the rough bark was changed into brutish flesh and the twisted 
branches into human arms. It became a monstrous, goat-legged 
thing, more vast than the creatures of nightmare. She saw the horns 
and the long beard, the great hairy legs with their hoofs, and the 
man's rapacious hands. The face was horrible with lust and cruelty, 
and yet it was divine. It was Pan, playing on his pipes, and the 
lecherous eyes caressed her with a hideous tenderness. But even 
while she looked, as the mist of early day, rising, discloses a fair 
country, the animal part of that ghoulish creature seemed to fall 
away, and she saw a lovely youth, titanic but sublime, leaning 
against a massive rock. He was more beautiful than the Adam of 
Michelangelo who wakes into life at the call of the Almighty; and, 
like him freshly created, he had the adorable languor of one who 
feels still in his limbs the soft rain on the loose brown earth. Naked 
and full of majesty he lay, the outcast son of the morning; and she 
dared not look upon his face, for she knew it was impossible to bear 
the undying pain that darkened it with ruthless shadows. Impelled 
by a great curiosity, she sought to come nearer, but the vast figure 
seemed strangely to dissolve into a cloud; and immediately she felt 
herself again surrounded by a hurrying throng. Then came all 

---

legendary monsters and foul beasts of a madman's fancy; in the 
darkness she saw enormous toads, with paws pressed to their 
flanks, and huge limping scarabs, shelled creatures the like of which 
she had never seen, and noisome brutes with horny scales and 
round crabs' eyes, uncouth primeval things, and winged serpents, 
and creeping animals begotten of the slime. She heard shrill cries 
and peals of laughter and the terrifying rattle of men at the point of 
death. Haggard women, dishevelled and lewd, carried wine; and 
when they spilt it there were stains like the stains of blood. And it 
seemed to Margaret that a fire burned in her veins, and her soul fled 
from her body; but a new soul came in its place, and suddenly she 
knew all that was obscene. She took part in some festival of hideous 
lust, and the wickedness of the world was patent to her eyes. She 
saw things so vile that she screamed in terror, and she heard Oliver 
laugh in derision by her side. It was a scene of indescribable horror, 
and she put her hands to her eyes so that she might not see. 
She felt Oliver Haddo take her hands. She would not let him drag 
them away. Then she heard him speak. 
'You need not be afraid.' 
His voice was quite natural once more, and she realized with a start 
that she was sitting quietly in the studio. She looked around her 
with frightened eyes. Everything was exactly as it had been. The 
early night of autumn was fallen, and the only light in the room 
came from the fire. There was still that vague, acrid scent of the 
substance which Haddo had burned. 
'Shall I light the candles?' he said. 
He struck a match and lit those which were on the piano. They 
threw a strange light. Then Margaret suddenly remembered all that 
she had seen, and she remembered that Haddo had stood by her 
side. Shame seized her, intolerable shame, so that the colour, rising 
to her cheeks, seemed actually to burn them. She hid her face in her 
hands and burst into tears. 
'Go away,' she said. 'For God's sake, go.' 

---

He looked at her for a moment; and the smile came to his lips which 
Susie had seen after his tussle with Arthur, when last he was in the 
studio. 
'When you want me you will find me in the Rue de Vaugiraud, 
number 209,' he said. 'Knock at the second door on the left, on the 
third floor.' 
She did not answer. She could only think of her appalling shame. 
'I'll write it down for you in case you forget.' 
He scribbled the address on a sheet of paper that he found on the 
table. Margaret took no notice, but sobbed as though her heart 
would break. Suddenly, looking up with a start, she saw that he was 
gone. She had not heard him open the door or close it. She sank 
down on her knees and prayed desperately, as though some terrible 
danger threatened her. 
But when she heard Susie's key in the door, Margaret sprang to her 
feet. She stood with her back to the fireplace, her hands behind her, 
in the attitude of a prisoner protesting his innocence. Susie was too 
much annoyed to observe this agitation. 
'Why on earth didn't you come to tea?' she asked. 'I couldn't make 
out what had become of you.' 
'I had a dreadful headache,' answered Margaret, trying to control 
herself. 
Susie flung herself down wearily in a chair. Margaret forced herself 
to speak. 
'Had Nancy anything particular to say to you?' she asked. 
'She never turned up,' answered Susie irritably. 'I can't understand 
it. I waited till the train came in, but there was no sign of her. Then I 
thought she might have hit upon that time by chance and was not 
coming from England, so I walked about the station for half an 
hour.' 

---

She went to the chimneypiece, on which had been left the telegram 
that summoned her to the Gare du Nord, and read it again. She gave 
a little cry of surprise. 
'How stupid of me! I never noticed the postmark. It was sent from 
the 
Rue 
Littré.' 
This was less than ten minutes' walk from the studio. Susie looked 
at the message with perplexity. 
'I wonder if someone has been playing a silly practical joke on me.' 
She shrugged her shoulders. 'But it's too foolish. If I were a 
suspicious woman,' she smiled, 'I should think you had sent it 
yourself to get me out of the way.' 
The idea flashed through Margaret that Oliver Haddo was the 
author of it. He might easily have seen Nancy's name on the 
photograph during his first visit to the studio. She had no time to 
think before she answered lightly. 
'If I wanted to get rid of you, I should have no hesitation in saying 
so.' 
'I suppose no one has been here?' asked Susie. 
'No one.' 
The lie slipped from Margaret's lips before she had made up her 
mind to tell it. Her heart gave a great beat against her chest. She felt 
herself redden. 
Susie got up to light a cigarette. She wished to rest her nerves. The 
box was on the table and, as she helped herself, her eyes fell 
carelessly on the address that Haddo had left. She picked it up and 
read it aloud. 
'Who on earth lives there?' she asked. 
'I don't know at all,' answered Margaret. 

---

She braced herself for further questions, but Susie, without interest, 
put down the sheet of paper and struck a match. 
Margaret was ashamed. Her nature was singularly truthful, and it 
troubled her extraordinarily that she had lied to her greatest friend. 
Something stronger than herself seemed to impel her. She would 
have given much to confess her two falsehoods, but had not the 
courage. She could not bear that Susie's implicit trust in her 
straightforwardness should be destroyed; and the admission that 
Oliver Haddo had been there would entail a further 
acknowledgment of the nameless horrors she had witnessed. Susie 
would think her mad. 
There was a knock at the door; and Margaret, her nerves shattered 
by all that she had endured, could hardly restrain a cry of terror. She 
feared that Haddo had returned. But it was Arthur Burdon. She 
greeted him with a passionate relief that was unusual, for she was 
by nature a woman of great self-possession. She felt excessively 
weak, physically exhausted as though she had gone a long journey, 
and her mind was highly wrought. Margaret remembered that her 
state had been the same on her first arrival in Paris, when, in her 
eagerness to get a preliminary glimpse of its marvels, she had 
hurried till her bones ached from one celebrated monument to 
another. They began to speak of trivial things. Margaret tried to join 
calmly in the conversation, but her voice sounded unnatural, and 
she fancied that more than once Arthur gave her a curious look. At 
length she could control herself no longer and burst into a sudden 
flood of tears. In a moment, uncomprehending but affectionate, he 
caught her in his arms. He asked tenderly what was the matter. He 
sought to comfort her. She wept ungovernably, clinging to him for 
protection. 
'Oh, it's nothing,' she gasped. 'I don't know what is the matter with 
me. 
I'm only nervous and frightened.' 
Arthur had an idea that women were often afflicted with what he 
described by the old-fashioned name of vapours, and was not 
disposed to pay much attention to this vehement distress. He 
soothed her as he would have done a child. 

---

'Oh, take care of me, Arthur. I'm so afraid that some dreadful thing 
will happen to me. I want all your strength. Promise that you'll 
never forsake me.' 
He laughed, as he kissed away her tears, and she tried to smile. 
'Why can't we be married at once?' she asked. 'I don't want to wait 
any longer. I shan't feel safe till I'm actually your wife.' 
He reasoned with her very gently. After all, they were to be married 
in a few weeks. They could not easily hasten matters, for their house 
was not yet ready, and she needed time to get her clothes. The date 
had been fixed by her. She listened sullenly to his words. Their 
wisdom was plain, and she did not see how she could possibly 
insist. Even if she told him all that had passed he would not believe 
her; he would think she was suffering from some trick of her morbid 
fancy. 
'If anything happens to me,' she answered, with the dark, anguished 
eyes of a hunted beast, 'you will be to blame.' 
'I promise you that nothing will happen.' 

---

9 
Margaret's night was disturbed, and next day she was unable to go 
about her work with her usual tranquillity. She tried to reason 
herself into a natural explanation of the events that had happened. 
The telegram that Susie had received pointed to a definite scheme 
on Haddo's part, and suggested that his sudden illness was but a 
device to get into the studio. Once there, he had used her natural 
sympathy as a means whereby to exercise his hypnotic power, and 
all she had seen was merely the creation of his own libidinous fancy. 
But though she sought to persuade herself that, in playing a vile 
trick on her, he had taken a shameful advantage of her pity, she 
could not look upon him with anger. Her contempt for him, her 
utter loathing, were alloyed with a feeling that aroused in her horror 
and dismay. She could not get the man out of her thoughts. All that 
he had said, all that she had seen, seemed, as though it possessed a 
power of material growth, unaccountably to absorb her. It was as if 
a rank weed were planted in her heart and slid long poisonous 
tentacles down every artery, so that each part of her body was 
enmeshed. Work could not distract her, conversation, exercise, art, 
left her listless; and between her and all the actions of life stood the 
flamboyant, bulky form of Oliver Haddo. She was terrified of him 
now as never before, but curiously had no longer the physical 
repulsion which hitherto had mastered all other feelings. Although 
she repeated to herself that she wanted never to see him again, 
Margaret could scarcely resist an overwhelming desire to go to him. 
Her will had been taken from her, and she was an automaton. She 
struggled, like a bird in the fowler's net with useless beating of the 
wings; but at the bottom of her heart she was dimly conscious that 
she did not want to resist. If he had given her that address, it was 
because he knew she would use it. She did not know why she 
wanted to go to him; she had nothing to say to him; she knew only 
that it was necessary to go. But a few days before she had seen the 
Phèdre
of Racine, and she felt on a sudden all the torments that 
wrung the heart of that unhappy queen; she, too, struggled 
aimlessly to escape from the poison that the immortal gods poured 
in her veins. She asked herself frantically whether a spell had been 
cast over her, for now she was willing to believe that Haddo's power 
was all-embracing. Margaret knew that if she yielded to the horrible 

---

temptation nothing could save her from destruction. She would 
have cried for help to Arthur or to Susie, but something, she knew 
not what, prevented her. At length, driven almost to distraction, she 
thought that Dr Porhoët might do something for her. He, at least, 
would understand her misery. There seemed not a moment to lose, 
and she hastened to his house. They told her he was out. Her heart 
sank, for it seemed that her last hope was gone. She was like a 
person drowning, who clings to a rock; and the waves dash against 
him, and beat upon his bleeding hands with a malice all too human, 
as if to tear them from their refuge. 
Instead of going to the sketch-class, which was held at six in the 
evening, she hurried to the address that Oliver Haddo had given 
her. She went along the crowded street stealthily, as though afraid 
that someone would see her, and her heart was in a turmoil. She 
desired with all her might not to go, and sought vehemently to 
prevent herself, and yet withal she went. She ran up the stairs and 
knocked at the door. She remembered his directions distinctly. In a 
moment Oliver Haddo stood before her. He did not seem astonished 
that she was there. As she stood on the landing, it occurred to her 
suddenly that she had no reason to offer for her visit, but his words 
saved her from any need for explanation. 
'I've been waiting for you,' he said. 
Haddo led her into a sitting-room. He had an apartment in a