or something feline, of larger growth: the panther, for example,
in Balzac's thrilling story, "A Passion in the Desert."

I have never, before or since, met any woman so totally devoid of the
moral sense as Beatrice. Yet she had a heart that was not bad; indeed it
was a tender heart. But there was no moral sense to guide and balance
her.

I think of Beatrice as very much a product of that time. Her own
personal enjoyment, pleasure, indulgence; these formed alike the centre
and the limit of her thoughts and aims. And the suggestion that serious
thought or energy should be given to any other end, struck Beatrice as
necessarily insincere and absurd. As for duty, the word had no more real
application to her own life as Beatrice saw it than the counsels of
old-time chivalry for the pursuit of the Holy Grail.

Soberly considered, this is doubtless very grievous. But it must be
said that if Beatrice was singular in this, her singularity lay rather
in her frank disclosure of her attitude than in the attitude itself. I
am not sure that morally her absorption in such crude pleasures as she
knew, was a whit more culpable than the equal absorption of nine people
out of ten at that time, in money-getting, in sport, in society
functions, or in sheer idleness. The same oblivion to the sense of duty
was very generally characteristic; though in other matters, no doubt,
the moral sense was more active. In Beatrice it simply was not present
at all.

All this was tolerably clear to me even then; but I will not pretend
that it interfered much with the physical and emotional attraction which
Beatrice had for me. Apart from her my life was very drab in colour. I
had no recreations. In my time at Rugby and at Cambridge we either
practically ignored sport (so far, at all events, as actual
participation in it went), or lived for it. I had very largely ignored
it. Now, Beatrice Blaine represented, not exactly recreation,
perhaps--no, not that I think--but gaiety. The hours I spent in her
company were the only form of gaiety that entered into my life.

My feeling for Beatrice was not serious love, not at all a grand
passion; but denying myself the occasional pleasure of ministering to
her appetite for little outings would have been a harder task for me
than the acceptation of Sylvia Wheeler's dismissal. My attentions to
Beatrice were very much those of Balzac's Provencal to his panther,
after he had overcome his first terrors.

There were t