THE VAMPIRE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 21 May 1927, Page 17

THE VAMPIRE.

There is another type of vampire than the woman who is all out to “put it across” the sterner sex. The particular kind of “vamp” I have in. mind is a creature of terrific vanity and colossol emotional appetites, who feeds on the more or les3 foolish confidences of those who mistake her vampire qualities for exquisite sympathy and understanding. Understanding she certainly is! She understands with uncanny prescience just what to say and how to act in the presence of her victims. She knows the art of leading them down the garden from A to Z. And when she has stripped their souls naked and satisfied her abominable curiosity to its fullest extent, she sends them away with the conviction that at last they have found the Perfect Friend.

Until the inevitable disillusionment comes, and the Perfect- Friend is revealed in her true colours. The process is usually stunning in its swiftness, and some simple souls take a long time to recover from the shock of discovery Others learn wisdom from the encouuter, and adopt a protective cynicism that holds them immune from similar experiences. It is the former who ought to be forewarned and forearmed in the company of the vamp. First,

they should know how to recognise her wicked magnetism! That caressing voice, those eyes that seem to radiate sympathy and goodwill, that diabolical flair for establishing instantaneous telepathetic contacts —such are the weapons with which the emotion-vampire does her deadly work. And it is all the more deadly because, for the time being, she is perfectly sincere. She really is acutely interested in the mental and temperamental make-up of her victim. But it is an interest that is speedily satisfied and degenerates forthwith into boredom.

The simple soul that gives all it has to give learns that the exquisite sympathy and responsiveness which was to kindle a new glory in everyday living was but the gratification of over-ween-ing vanity; the triumphant expression of the “I-can-do-what-I-likc-with-any-one" type, that is happy only when it is vaunting its psychological prowess, and making conquests that shall entail .none of the irk of sustained comradeship.