happened therein, could not blame herself. She now loved Perigal more
than she had ever believed it possible for woman to love man; she
belonged to him body and soul; she was all love, consequently she had
no room in her being for vain regrets.

When she was alone, as now, her pride was irked at the fact of her not
being a bride; she believed that the tenacious way in which she had
husbanded her affections gave her every right to expect the privilege
of wifehood. It was, also, then she realised that her very life
depended upon the continuance of Perigal's love: she had no doubt that
he would marry her with as little delay as possible. Otherwise, the
past was forgotten, the future ignored: she wholly surrendered herself
to her new-born ecstasy begotten of her surrender. He was the world,
and nothing else mattered. So far as she was concerned, their love for
each other was the beginning, be-all, and end of earthly things.

It was a matter of complete indifference to her that she was living at
Polperro with her lover as Mrs and Mr Ward.

It may, perhaps, be wondered why a girl of Mavis's moral
susceptibilities could be so indifferent to her habit of thought as to
find such unalloyed rapture in a union unsanctified by church and
unprotected by law. The truth is that women, as a sex, quickly
accommodate themselves to such a situation as that in which Mavis found
herself, and very rarely suffer the pangs of remorse which are placed
to their credit by imaginative purists. The explanation may be that
women live closer to nature than men; that they set more store on
sentiment and passion than those of the opposite sex; also, perhaps,
because they instinctively rebel against a male-manufactured morality
to which women have to subscribe, largely for the benefit of men whose
observance of moral law is more "honoured in the breach than in the
observance." Indeed, it may be regarded as axiomatic that with nine
hundred and ninety-nine women out of a thousand the act of bestowing
themselves on the man they love is looked upon by them as the merest
incident in their lives. The thousandth, the exception, to whom, like
Mavis, such a surrender is a matter of supreme moment, only suffers
tortures of remorse when threatened by the loss of the man's love or by
other inconvenient but natural consequences of sexual temerity.

Mavis was recalled to the immediate present by an arm stealing about
her neck; she thrilled at the touch of the man