e foolish chatterer as
a prophet. So life was not as I had been taught--a painful struggle
between good and evil. There was no such thing as evil; the senseless
epithet was a libel upon Nature. Not through wearisome repression, but
rather through joyous expression of the animal lay advancement.

Villains--workers in wrong for aesthetic pleasure of the art--are useful
characters in fiction; in real life they do not exist. I am convinced
the man believed most of the rubbish he talked. Since the time of which
I write he has done some service to the world. I understand he is an
excellent husband and father, a considerate master, a delightful
host. He intended, I have no doubt, to improve me, to enlarge my
understanding, to free me from soul-stifling bondage of convention. Not
to credit him with this well-meaning intention would be to assume
him something quite inhuman, to bestow upon him a dignity beyond his
deserts. I find it easier to regard him merely as a fool.

Our leading lady was a handsome but coarse woman, somewhat
over-developed. Starting life as a music-hall singer, she had married
a small tradesman in the south of London. Some three or four years
previous, her Juno-like charms had turned the head of a youthful
novelist--a refined, sensitive man, of whom great things in literature
had been expected, and, judging from his earlier work, not unreasonably.
He had run away with her, and eventually married her; the scandal was
still fresh. Already she had repented of her bargain. These women regard
their infatuated lovers merely as steps in the social ladder, and he
had failed to appreciably advance her. Under her demoralising spell his
ambition had died in him. He no longer wrote, no longer took interest
in anything beyond his own debasement. He was with us in the company,
playing small parts, and playing them badly; he would have remained with
us as bill-poster rather than have been sent away.

Vane planned to bring this woman and myself together. To her he pictured
me a young gentleman of means, a coming author, who would soon be
earning an income sufficient to keep her in every luxury. To me he
hinted that she had fallen in love with me. I was never attracted to
her by any feeling stronger than the admiration with which one views a
handsome animal. It was my vanity upon which he worked. He envied me;
any man would envy me; experience of life was what I needed to complete
my genius. The great intellects of this ea