THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT

By WINSTON CHURCHILL


Volume 2




CHAPTER IX

At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension
her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's
ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being
able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young
woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement that
the leash might break--and then what? Here was a situation, she knew
instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of
possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that
very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to think
about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of anomalies
and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her knowledge
and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which is rapidly
discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to achieve the
morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance. Tradition,
convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the movies, even her
mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom with which the
sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her. The thought,
however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise, despite a