III


Hear now of the immediate end. This gentleman, a philosopher and poet,
rich in theory, having reached a middle point in his career, had found
that he had, without knowing it, encountered a Fact which had gripped him
in a vital part, squeezed the very fibres of him, sucked him apparently
dry of human juices, even of the zest to live, and presently departed,
leaving him faint by the wayside. Not until he was clean gone did he have
the least suspicion that it had been there, and (if he could have known
it) the first glimmering of reawakening pulse in him was the considering
of its nature. Brooding upon it, while he grieved over his languor, he
discovered that it had not been hard and scaly, like your ordinary
vampire, but soft-lipped, brown-eyed, warm-fleshed, cloudy-haired; in
fact, a pretty woman. Now, in all his previous relations with that sex,
while he had given much of himself, he had never met before with a woman
whose need was the measure of her allure. If she had not wanted him so
much, he would never have thought of her twice. But this was precisely
what had happened. She had acted upon him as a vacuum upon air. Her
helplessness, her ignorance, her appealing belief in him, her clinging
power, heightening her physical charm, had sucked him in a stream; and
when she was full of him, he was empty. She had been the first to find it
out. Having trailed him in her wake for a season, against his instincts,
against his conscience, she presently coaxed him to let her go. Let her
go! He asked nothing better than to see her happy, and saw no other way of
being so himself. When she had gone, and was safely married to an old
admirer, our expended friend lay, like a gaffed salmon, faintly flapping