It was an angel's face, until the woman herself looked out of it: then you were struck by the strange incongruity between tenement and tenant.
"That at one time she had loved her husband, I have little doubt.

Vicious women have few vices, and sordidness is not usually one of them.

She had probably married him, borne towards him by one of those waves of passion upon which the souls of animal natures are continually rising and falling.

On possession, however, had quickly followed satiety, and from satiety had grown the desire for a new sensation.
"They were living at Cairo at the period; her husband held an important official position there, and by virtue of this, and of her own beauty and tact, her house soon became the centre of the Anglo-Saxon society ever drifting in and out of the city.

The women disliked her, and copied her.
The men spoke slightingly of her to their wives, lightly of her to each other, and made idiots of themselves when they were alone with her.