She frequently found herself wondering why intercourse between man
and woman was hedged about by innumerable restrictions. It seemed to
her that what people called the conventionalities were a device of
the far-seeing eye of the Most High to regulate the relations of His
children. If any of these appeared to escape the ends for which they
were made, she put down the failure to the imperfect construction of
the human organism, the constant aberrations of which necessitated
the restraints imposed by religion and morality.

Mavis soon descended from the general to the particular. Her mind
continually dwelt on every incident of her brief acquaintance with
Windebank: she found that it was as much as she could do to justify
the exigent scruples which had made her repel the man's approaches.
One day, the scales fell from her eyes. She had deserted the canal
and was sitting in a field, some two miles from the town, where the
few trees it contained were disposed as if they were continually
setting to partners, in some arboreous quadrille. The surrounding
fields were tipped at all angles, as if in petulant discontent of
one-time flatness. With an effort she could discern, Jill's tail
wagging delightedly from a hole in a ditch, where she was hunting a
rabbit. The voice, the sights, the sounds of nature, all served to
obliterate the effect of life, as she had, hitherto, regarded it,
upon her processes of thought. Archie Windebank's wealth, social
position and career were as nought to her; he appealed to her only
as a man, and her conceivable relationship to him was but as female
to male.

All other considerations, which she had before believed of
importance, now seemed trivial and inept. She wondered how she could
have been blinded for so long. She bitterly reproached herself for