Marie Corelli

The Silver Domino Marie Corelli

Well, old musty, dusty, time-trodden arena of Literature and Society, what now? Are your doors wide open, and may a stranger enter? A perpetual dance is going on, so your outside advertisements proclaim; and truly a dance is good so long as it is suggestive of wholesome mirth. But is yours a dance of Death or of Life? A fandango of mockery, a rigadoon of sham, or a waltzing-game at "beggar my neighbour"? Moreover, is the fun worth paying for? Let me look in and judge. Nay, by the gods of Homer, what a dire confusion of sight and sense and sound is all this "mortal coil" and whirligig of humanity! Whatnoise and laughter, interspersed with sundry groanings, as of fiends in Hell! Listening, I catch the echoes of many voices I know; now and again I have glimpses of faces that in their beauty or ugliness, their smiling or sneering, are perfectly familiar to me. Friends? No, not precisely.