there you would be wrong! O yes! my boy!” he howled remotely.
“You may have thought so, but you would be wrong—Say!” he turned slowly with a malevolent glint of interrogation, a controlled ironic power—“was the Fifth Symphony written by a woman? Was the object of your aunt’s worship, Richard Wagner, a female?” he snarled. “By no means! Where are their great works—their mighty symphonies, their great paintings, their epic poetry? Was it in a woman’s skull that the Critique of Pure Reason was conceived? Is the gigantic work upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel the product of a woman’s genius?—Say! did you ever hear of a lady by the name of William Shakespeare? Was it a female of that name who wrote King Lear? Are you familiar with the works of a nice young lady named John Milton? Or Fräulein Goethe, a sweet German girl?” he sneered. “Perhaps you have been edified by the writ-ings of Mademoiselle Voltaire or Miss Jonathan Swift? Phuh! Phuh! Phuh! Phuh! Phuh!”
He paused, stared deliberately across his hands, and in a moment repeated, slowly and distinctly: “The woman gave me of the tree and I did eat. Ah! that’s it! There, my boy, you have it! There, in a nutshell, you have the work for which they are best fitted.” And he turned upon his nephew suddenly with a blaze of passion, his voice husky and tremulous from the stress of emotion. “The tempter! The Bringer of Forbidden Fruit! The devil’s ambassador! Since the beginning of time that has been their office—to madden the brain, to turn man’s spirit from its highest purposes, to corrupt, to seduce, and to destroy! To creep and crawl, to intrude into the lonely places of man’s heart and brain, to wind herself into the core of his most secret life as a worm eats its way into a healthy fruit—to do all this with the guile of a serpent, the cunning of a fox—that, my boy, is what she’s here for!—and she’ll never change!” And, lowering his voice to an ominous and foreboding whisper, he said mysteriously, “Beware! Beware! Do not be deceived!”
In a moment more he had resumed his tone and manner of calm deliberation and, with an air of irrelevance, somewhat grudgingly, as if throwing a bone to a dog, he said: “Your aunt, of course, was a woman of considerable mentality—considerable, that is, for a female. Of course, her mind is no longer what it used to be. I never talk to her any more,” he said indifferently. “I do not listen to her. I think she said something to me about your coming out on Sunday! But I do not know. No, sir, I could not tell you what her plans are. I have my own interests, and I suppose she has hers. Of course, she has her music…. Yes, sir, she always
