“For your threats,” she went on, without heeding him, “I care nothing, for, as I tell you, I have their antidote at hand.  You have known me for many years, tell me, did you ever see my nerve desert me?  Do you suppose that I am a woman who would bear failure when I could choose death?  No, George, I had rather pass into eternity on the crest of the wave of my success, such as it has been, and let it break and grind me to powder there, or else bear me to greater heights.  All that should have been a woman’s better part in the world you have destroyed in me.  I do not say that it was altogether your fault, for an evil destiny bound me to you, and it must seem odd to you when I say that, knowing you for what you are, I still love you.  And to fill up this void, to trample down those surging memories, I have made myself a slave to my ambition, and the acquisition of another power that you cannot understand.  The man you married me to is rich and a knight to-day.  I made him so.  If I live another twenty years, his wealth shall be colossal and his influence unbounded, and I will be one of the most powerful women in the kingdom.  Why do you suppose that I so fear your treachery?  Do you think that I should mind its being known that I had thrown aside that poor fig-leaf, virtue—­the green garment that marks a coward or a fool; for, mark you, all women, or nearly all, would be vicious if they dared.  Fear and poverty of spirit restrain them, not virtue.  Why, it is by their vices, properly managed, that women have always risen, and always will rise.  To be really great, I think that a woman must be vicious with discrimination, and I respect vice accordingly.  No, it is not that I fear.  I am afraid because I have a husband whose bitter resentment is justly piling up against me from year to year, who only lies in wait for an opportunity to destroy me.  Nor is he my only enemy.  In his skilful hands, the letters you possess can, as society is in this country, be used so as to make me powerless.  Yes, George, all the good in me is dead; the mad love I have given you is hourly outraged, and yet I cannot shake it off. There alone my strength fails me, and I am weak as a child.  Only the power to exercise my will, my sense of command over the dullards round me, and a yet keener pleasure you do not know of, are left to me.  If these are taken away, what will my life be?  A void, a waste, a howling wilderness, a place where I will not stay!  I had rather tempt the unknown.  Even in Hell there must be scope for abilities such as mine!”

She paused awhile, as if for an answer, and then went on—­