unbridled
forces of nature have no dealings with such as these. They are people
of pleasure. They have taken the gifts that Nature has offered and,
with the subtle cunning of their minds, have torn the inviolable
parchment of her laws to shreds before her face. With no inheritance
of the intellect, Devenish possessed all the other qualities.
Sensualist as he was, with that strain of refinement induced by the
easy circumstances of life, the paid women disgusted him. Of mere
animalism, he had none. Here in this widest essential, his nature
marked its contrast with Traill. To admit the beast in every man would
have been beyond him; simply because the admission of a
generalization such as that, would most directly have implied
himself. In Traill's concession of it, such an admission may easily
be read. And this is the type of man, such as Devenish, most dangerous
to society.

If the threadbare hypocrisy of this country of England could but
bring itself to don the acknowledgment that the hired woman has her
place in the scheme of things, such men as Devenish would find the
virtuous woman more closely guarded from their strategies than she
is.

When her first song was finished, Sally turned in her chair, laughing
frankly to his eyes.

"You needn't suffer on account of your passion for music by having
to criticize," she said. "I know it was awful."

He crossed the room to her side. "As you like," he said, bringing
his eyes full to hers. "You can call it anything you please--but I
want some more." He picked up the pieces of music that lay on the
top of the piano. "Do you sing that song out of the Persian
Garden--Beside the Shalimar? I forget the words of it?"

Her fingers ran through the pile of music. "'Pale Hands I Loved.'
Is that it?" She lifted her face and looked up at him.

"Yes--yes--sing that!"

"I'm afraid I haven't got the music--can't play without the music."

He drew a deep breath. "That's a pity," he said.

"Well--listen--I'll sing this."

She placed the music before her on the rest, and with one hand on
the back of her chair, the other resting on the piano, he bent over
her, eyes wandering from the gold of her hair to the parting of her
lips as she sang. It was just such a song as he had asked for; filled
with the abandoned sentimentalism of decadent passion--

"Lord of my life, than whom none other shareth
The deep, red, silent wine that fills my soul--
Take thou and drain, till not one