decided to try to master
during the voyage. She read a page, understanding much better than when
she had read it to her father. But she was pulled up over the word
"inhibition."

It was a chapter of generalization at the end of the book that she was
trying to fathom.

_"Women have no inhibitions: their pretended inhibitions serve exactly
the same purpose as the civet-cat's scent of musk, the peacock's
gorgeous tail, the glow-worm's lamp. A woman's inhibitions are
invitations. Women do not exist--per se. They are merely the vehicles of
existence. If they fail to reproduce their kind, they have failed in
their purpose; they are unconsciously ruled by the philoprogenitive
passion; it is their raison d'etre, for it they are fed, clothed,
trained, bred. Existing for the race, they enjoy existence merely in the
preliminary canter. Small brained, short-visioned, they lose sight
of the race and desire the preliminary canter, with its excitements and
promises, to continue indefinitely."_

The word "philoprogenitive" and the French phrase stopped her.

"Why on earth I didn't bring a dictionary," she said, "passes my
comprehension! I'll write the words down and ask someone."

A young man was sitting on the deck a few yards away, his back against a
capstan. He looked supremely uncomfortable trying to read a little
blue-backed book.

Marcella looked at Louis's chair empty beside her.

"Wouldn't you like to sit on this chair?" she said, and the young man
looked up startled.

"You look so uncomfortable there. This chair isn't being used. Won't you
sit down?"

"That's very good of you. I was getting a decided crick in my back," he
said, sitting down and wondering whether to go on reading or to
entertain her. Marcella looked at him; he was the epitome of propriety,
the spirit of the Sabbath incarnate in his neat black suit, gold
watch-chain and very high collar.

"I really asked you to sit here for quite a selfish reason," she said.
"I want to know the meanings of some words that have just cropped up.
You look as if you know."

The young man coughed and looked pleased.

"I am a schoolmaster," he remarked. "Probably I can--"

"Inhibition?" she interrupted.

"Inhibition?" he said. "That means 'holding back.' Latin '_habeo_, I
have' or 'I hold' and 'in--"

"Women have no inhibitions," she repeated; "no power of holding back."

She frowned, and decided to return to that later. "Now
philoprogenitive," she said turning