woman--supposing she is my wife--and I go to
her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is I who want. Then she
puts me off. Then she says, not now, not now, I am tired, I am not well.
I do not feel like it. She puts me off--till I am angry or sorry or
whatever I am--but till my blood has gone down again, you understand,
and I don't want her any more. And then she puts her arms round me, and
caresses me, and makes love to me--till she rouses me once more. So, and
so she rouses me--and so I come to her. And I love her, it is very good,
very good. But it was she who began, it was her initiative, you know.--I
do not think, in all my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative,
you know. She will yield to me--because I insist, or because she wants
to be a good submissive wife who loves me. So she will yield to me. But
ah, what is it, you know? What is it a woman who allows me, and who has
no answer? It is something worse than nothing--worse than nothing. And
so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving.--If I say to her, she
says it is not true--not at all true. Then she says, all she wants is
that I should desire her, that I should love her and desire her. But
even that is putting her will first. And if I come to her so, if I come
to her of my own desire, then she puts me off. She puts me off, or she
only allows me to come to her. Even now it is the same after ten years,
as it was at first. But now I know, and for many years I did not know--"

The little man was intense. His face was strained, his blue eyes so
stretched that they showed the whites all round. He gazed into Lilly's
face.

"But does it matter?" said Lilly slowly, "in which of you the desire
initiates? Isn't the result the same?"

"It matters. It matters--" cried the Marchese.

"Oh, my dear fellow, how MUCH it matters--" interrupted Argyle sagely.

"Ay!" said Aaron.

The Marchese looked from one to the other of them.

"It matters!" he cried. "It matters life or death. It used to be, that
desire started in the man, and the woman answered. It used to be so for
a long time in Italy. For this reason the women were kept away from the
men. For this reason our Catholic religion tried to keep the young girls
in convents, and innocent, before marriage. So that with their minds
they should not know, and should not start this terrible thing, this
woman's desire over a man, beforehand. This desire which starts in a
woman's head, when she knows, and which