Only the third act had ended differently. His girl wife, of whom he
was passionately fond, had taken it quite seriously and had
committed suicide. A foolish thing to do."
"Man is a beast!" said the Girton Girl, who was prone to strong
expression.
"I thought so myself when I was younger," said the Woman of the
World.
"And don't you now, when you hear a thing like that?" suggested the
Girton Girl.
"Certainly, my dear," replied the Woman of the World; "there is a
deal of the animal in man; but--well, I was myself expressing that
same particular view of him, the brute, to a very old lady with whom
I was spending a winter in Brussels, many years ago now, when I was
quite a girl. She had been a friend of my father's, and was one of
the sweetest and kindest--I was almost going to say the most perfect
woman I have ever met; though as a celebrated beauty, stories,
dating from the early Victorian era, were told about her. But
myself I never believed them. Her calm, gentle, passionless face,
crowned with its soft, silver hair--I remember my first sight of the
Matterhorn on a summer's evening; somehow it at once reminded me of
her.
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