In the contest rageing at mid-sea still between the man and the woman,
it is the one who is hard to the attractions of the other that will make
choice of the spot and have the advantages. A short time earlier Lord
Ormont could have marked it out at his leisure. He would have been
unable to comprehend why it was denied him to do so now; for he was
master of himself, untroubled by conscience, unaware, since he was
assured of his Aminta's perfect safety and his restored sense of
possession, that any taint of softness in him had reversed the condition
of their alliance. He felt benevolently the much he had to bestow, and
was about to bestow. Meanwhile, without complicity on his part, without
his knowledge, yet absolutely involving his fate, the battle had gone
against him in Aminta's breast.

Like many of his class and kind, he was thoroughly acquainted with the
physical woman, and he took that first and very engrossing volume of
the great Book of Mulier for all the history. A powerful wing of
imagination, strong as the flappers of the great Roc of Arabian story,
is needed to lift the known physical woman even a very little way up into
azure heavens. It is far easier to take a snap-shot at the psychic, and
tumble her down from her fictitious heights to earth. The mixing of the
two make nonsense of her. She was created to attract the man, for an
excellent purpose in the main. We behold her at work incessantly. One
is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light. By the various arts
at her disposal she will have us, unless early in life we tear away the
creature's coloured gauzes and penetrate to her absurdly simple
mechanism. That done, we may, if we please, dominate her. High priests
of every religion have successively denounced her as the chief enemy.
To subdue and bid her minister to our satisfaction is therefore a right
employment of man's unperverted superior strength. Of course, we keep to