why she preferred to walk by the canal that touched Melkbridge in its
quiet and lonely course. The canal had a beauty of its own in Mavis'
eyes: its red-brick, ivy-grown bridges, its wooden drawbridges, deep
locks, and deserted grass-grown tow-paths were all eloquent of the
waterways having arrived at a certain philosophic repose, which was in
striking contrast to the girl's unquiet thoughts. Soon, as if in
celebration of spring, both banks were gay with borders of great yellow
butter-cups. It seemed to Mavis as if they decorated the tables of a
feast to which she had not been asked. The great awakening in the heart
of life proceeded exquisitely, inevitably. Mavis believed that, as the
sun's rays had no real meaning for her, it was only by some cruel
mischance that she was enabled to bear witness to their daily
increasing warmth. She would tell the troubles of her disturbed mind to
Jill, who tried to show her sympathy by licking her face. At night, she
would often waken out of a deep sleep with a start, when her eagerly
outstretched arms would grasp a vast emptiness. The sight of lovers
walking together would bring hot blood to her head; the proximity of a
young man would make her heart beat strangely.

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, wh