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what intelligence failed to impart. I shall be very surprised if sooner or later, she does not find her 
true will. For her only foes are ignorance and fear. Her heart is whole and honest. 
With Helen the case was very different. I had met her in Paris early in '21, taken her to lunch at 
Lavenue's several times, and introduced her to some of my friends. I saw in the first few minutes 
that her life was one long pang. She had nothing to look back upon with pleasure or any hope for 
the future. Her face told the tale. The skin was dry, wrinkled and jaundiced; the thin lips were 
compressed with constant bitterness. Her intelligence was sufficient to tell her what was wrong. 
She had never known freedom. She had been robbed of her soul so that her masters might have a 
machine they could trust not to play any trick. The steam roller of social injustice had flattened 
her. Every drop of her blood had been drained by sterile servitude to soulless wealth. Yet she would 
not accept the way of escape that we offered so freely. Her suffering was intensified by the sight of 
the carefree happiness which 
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she found in the abbey. At the time of her visit, we happened to be particularly short of funds, and 
it enraged her to see that poverty was powerless to destroy our happiness or drag love from his 
throne in our hearts. Why couldn't we quarrel and scold like the people she was accustomed to? 
Envy gnawed at her liver and black bile oozed from the wounds. She began to hate us with insane 
intensity and the fiend fattened on the fact that her malice was impotent to make us unkind to her. 
However, she succeeded at least in making herself impossible. She started a campaign of venomous 
falsehoods, which she knew to be such. The Ape and I had planned to go to England before she 
arrived, but by a series of accidents we were obliged to postpone the journey. However, in view of 
our plans we had given up the second house, so that when she began to try to corrupt the children I 
was obliged to interfere. I gave her the choice between retracting some of the more malignant lies, 
in which I had caught her out, or pursuing her career of crime in some more favourable environment 
within fifteen minutes. She had no defence. The witnesses were unanimous. Her denials and 
evasions were nailed to the counter with a single smack the instant they were out of her mouth. So 
out she went, and we gave a great gasp of relief. Yet still I felt sorry. Even such cold malignity as 
hers only confirmed me in compassion. In other circumstances she might have developed into a 
human being. My action surprised her completely. I had seemed so easy going and unobservant, so 
uniformly considerate and kind. When that lazy big lion suddenly leapt from his lair, she suffered 
the shock of her life. "I thought there might be something of the sort," she said, startled out of 
prudence, "but I didn't think it would come for a long while." She had hoped to do irreparable 
damage before being found out, and now she learnt, as so many before her and since, that the big 
lion sleeps with one eye open. Baffled and broken, her only idea was revenge. She did an amazing 
thing. She went to some consul in Palermo and swore to a long list of lies. She thought she could 
make trouble for us, though even after racking her brains for slanders she could only think of one 
thing which might bring us into conflict with the law. It was an act of unspeakable vileness. Success 
could only mean that her sister would be utterly ruined, torn from her home and her children, and 
either put in prison or thrown upon the world penniless in a foreign country without resources of 
any kind. Having shot the poisoned arrow, she pursued the Parthian policy of putting as many 
thousand miles as possible between herself and her victims. Before we found out what she had done 
she must be safe from pursuit. It was no part of her scheme to have to confront us and be cross-
examined. 
Of course the whole thing fizzled out. On the one alleged breach of the law, we were raided by the 
Cefalu police, of course without warning. They did their duty, while, of course, well aware that 
they had been sent to look for a 
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mare's nest. They behaved with charming courtesy and withdrew with many apologies for their 
action. We have heard from time to time of Helen. She is back on the treadmill, lonely and loveless, 
wearily and miserably dragging her despair through life --- to call it life --- down to death. Should