“I’ve come,” he said, “from Emily de Reuss.  No, don’t interrupt me.  I’ve a sort of message for you which isn’t to be delivered as a message at all.  I’m to drop a hint to you that she would like you to go and see her, that your refusal to do so would be a little ungracious, because she came and saw you when you were ill.  I’m to let you think that she’s feeling a little hurt at your behaviour, and finally to work you up into going.  Do you see?”

“Not altogether,” Douglas answered, laughing.

“Well, it isn’t altogether a laughing matter,” Drexley said, grimly.  “I’ve got rid of my message.  Now I’m going to speak to you on my own account.  You’re young and you haven’t seen much of life.  You are no more capable of understanding a woman like Emily de Reuss than you are of talking Hindustanee.  For the matter of that neither am I, nor any of us.  Any ordinary words which I could use about her must sound ridiculous because of their inadequacy.  However, to make myself understood I must try.  She is not only a beautiful woman of unlimited wealth and social position, but she has, when she chooses to use them, the most extraordinary powers of attracting people to her.  She might exercise these gifts upon men of her own social rank who are, as a rule, of slighter character, and whose experience of the best of her sex is of course larger than ours.  She prefers, however, to stoop into another world for her victims—­into our world.”

“Why victims?” Douglas asked.  “Isn’t that rather an extreme view of the case?”

“It is a mild view,” Drexley said.  “I will justify it afterwards.  In the first place, I believe that she has genuine literary tastes, and a delight for the original in any shape or form.  The men in her own rank of life would neither afford her any pleasure nor would they be for a moment content with the return which she is prepared to offer for their devotion.  So she has chosen her victims, or, as you would say, friends, from amongst our men—­at least with a more robust virility and more limited expectation.  You will admit that so far I have spoken without bias.”

“In the main, yes,” Douglas answered.

“There are women,” Drexley said, “who are very beautiful and very attractive, who admit at times to their friendship men with whom anything but friendship would be impossible, and who contrive to insinuate in some subtle way that their personality is for themselves alone, or for some other chosen one.  How it’s done, I don’t know, but I believe there are plenty of women who do know, and who are able to preserve unbroken friendships with men who, but for the exercise of that gift, must inevitably fall in love with them.  And there are also women,” Drexley continued, with voice not quite so steady, “who have the opposite gift, who are absolutely heartless, wholly unscrupulous, as cold as adders, and who are continually promising with their eyes, and lips, and their cursed manner what they never intend to give.  They will take a strong man and break him upon the wheel, the wreck of whose life is a glorification to their vanity.  And of this type is Emily de Reuss.”