Excerpt from The Soul of Life: Or What Is Love? By turns she commanded, dictated, smiled, fascinated. She dominated the room by her mere presence in it. She was an autocratic sovereign in the society of willing slaves. Suddenly she clapped her hands sharply and lay back amongst the cushions, her eyes closed. It was a well-known signal. A moment later the room was empty, save for an old woman, slightly deformed, who was moving about noise lessly - arranging flowers, folding lengths of gorgeous brocade, hanging up dresses in the vast wardrobes which lined the walls. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.