. I gave him a sufficient dose of
veronal to insure his unconsciousness for several hours.
I thought that was the best service I could render him.

Chapter XXX

But the bed I made up for myself was sufficiently
uncomfortable to give me a wakeful night, and I thought a good
deal of what the unlucky Dutchman had told me. I was not so
much puzzled by Blanche Stroeve's action, for I saw in that
merely the result of a physical appeal. I do not suppose she
had ever really cared for her husband, and what I had taken
for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses
and comfort which in the minds of most women passes for it.
It is a passive feeling capable of being roused for any object,
as the vine can grow on any tree; and the wisdom of
the world recognises its strength when it urges a girl to
marry the man who wants her with the assurance that love will follow.
It is an emotion made up of the satisfaction in security,
pride of property, the pleasure of being desired,
the gratification of a household, and it is only by an amiable
vanity that women ascribe to it spiritual value. It is an
emotion which is defenceless against passion. I suspected
that Blanche Stroeve's violent dislike of Strickland had in it
from the beginning a vague element of sexual attraction.
Who am I that I should seek to unravel the mysterious intricacies
of sex? Perhaps Stroeve's passion excited without satisfying
that part of her nature, and she hated Strickland because she
felt in him the power to give her what she needed. I think
she was quite sincere when she struggled against her husband's
desire to bring him into the studio; I think she was
frightened of him, though she knew not why; and I remembered
how she had foreseen disaster. I think in some curious way
the horror which she felt for him was a transference of the
horror which she felt for herself because he so strangely
troubled her. His appearance was wild and uncouth; there was
aloofness in his eyes and sensuality in his mouth; he was big
and strong; he gave the impression of untamed passion; and
perhaps she felt in him, too, that sinister element which had
made me think of those wild beings of the world's early
history when matter, retaining its early connection with the
earth, seemed to possess yet a spirit of its own. If he
affected her at all, it was inevitable that she should love or
hate him. She hated him.

And then I fancy that the daily intimacy wi