"It's ghastly!" she exclaimed. "And, somehow, one feels it from the
very first--before a word is spoken. Imagine Rebecca at the window,
watching through the plants to see if Rosmer uses the footbridge from
which his wife once leaped to her death." She paused a moment, her
eyes upon the open pages; then lifting her head, she asked: "What do
you think of Rebecca?"
"A tremendous character--of wonderful strength. It was just such
proud, dark, purposeful souls that Byron delighted to draw; but the
only one in literature to whom I can fully liken her is the wife of
Macbeth. There was the same ambition--the same ruthless will--the same
disregard of everything that stood in her way. And, like Cawdor's
wife, she weakened in the end."
She regarded him fixedly.
"Would you call it weakness?" she asked.
"She fell in love with Johannes, did she not? That was weakness--for
her. She herself recognized it as such."
The girl looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.
"That is true," she said.
"Some of the world's most daring and accomplished criminals have been
women," he went on. "But Nature never intended woman to be the bearer
of burdens; there is a weakness in her soul structure somewhere; she
usually sinks under the consciousness of guilt.
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