They faced about and elbowed their way through an eager-eyed,
aimless-footed throng by the doorway.

"Now go on," said Marcella when they were in the street, walking down
beside Liberty's. She had one eye on the windows and one ear for the
doctor.

"You see, all these women here--they're doing something quite
unconsciously when they buy pretty clothes and spend so much time and
money on making themselves look so bonny," said the doctor, striding
along in his Inverness cape, quite oblivious that he was a very unique
figure in Regent Street. "They'll worry tremendously about what colour
suits them, what style sets off their beauty best. I don't think that
it's really because they like to see something bonny every time they
look in their mirror. I don't think it's even that they want admiration,
or envy. It's simply that they're ruled by the law of reproduction, if
they only knew it. Inside them is new life--these same questing cells.
These cells can only find separate existence through complementary
cells. So they urge these women on to make themselves charming,
capturing--married or single, they are the same, deep down, for natural
laws take no count of marriage laws, you know. The men are the same,
too. They beg and placate--and all the time deep down, they think they
are the choosers, the overlords. And the women tempt them and then run
away. Last of all they yield. These cells have it ingrained in them that
the woman-thing is only ready to yield after a chase. Very few people do
this consciously. A few do--people who have been let into the secret of
studying natural laws. Then they either do it for the fun of the chase,
or else because they're too morally lazy to fight the urge of the cells.
That's when they get holes torn in them."