He spoke between his teeth--the faint wind stirring the
desert sand sounded rather like his voice." Burnaby paused again and
reached over for a cigarette and lit it deliberately.
"He was a man," he continued, "who apparently had the faculty of making
most women love him and, in the end, the faculty of making all women
hate him. I imagine to have known him very well would have been to leave
one with a mental shudder such as follows the touching of anguilliform
material; snake-like texture. It would leave one ashamed and broken, for
fundamentally he was contemptuous of the dignity of personality,
particularly of the personalities of women. He was a collector, you
understand, a collector of beauty, and women, and incidents--amorous
incidents. He carried into his personal relationships the cold
objectiveness of the artist. But he wasn't a very great artist, or he
wouldn't have done so; he would have had the discrimination to control
the artist's greatest peril. It's a flame, this cold objectiveness, but
a flame so powerful that it must be properly shaded for intimate use.
Otherwise it kills like violet rays. Women wore out their hearts on him,
not like waves breaking on a crystal rock, but like rain breaking into a
gutter."
"Good Lord!" murmured Mrs. Ennis involuntarily.
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