"The thing that astonished me most in Amanda was the change in her
mental quality.
"With me in the old days she had always been a sincere person; she
had deceived me about facts, but she had never deceived me about
herself. Her personal, stark frankness had been her essential
strength. And it was gone. I came back to find Amanda an
accomplished actress, a thing of poses and calculated effects. She
was a surface, a sham, a Lorelei. Beneath that surface I could not
discover anything individual at all. Fear and a grasping quality,
such as God gave us all when he gave us hands; but the individual I
knew, the humorous wilful Spotless Leopard was gone. Whither, I
cannot imagine. An amazing disappearance. Clean out of space and
time like a soul lost for ever.
"When I went to see her in the morning, she was made up for a scene,
she acted an intricate part, never for a moment was she there in
reality. . . .
"I have got a remarkable persuasion that she lost herself in this
way, by cheapening love, by making base love to a lover she
despised.
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