en a
quiet decent girl all her days, of never stopping when students spoke to
her, of never wearing emerald green, though the colour went fine with
her hair, when people were ready to believe this awful thing of her?
They must be mad not to see that she would rather die than let any man
on earth touch her in any way, and least of all Yaverland, whom she
hated. There came before her eyes the memory of that bluish bloom on his
lips and jaw which she had noticed the first time she saw him, and she
rocked herself to and fro in a passion of tears at the thought she was
suspected of close contact with this loathsome maleness. She felt as if
there was buried in her bosom a harp with many strings, and each string
was snapping separately.

"Och, votes for women!" she said wearily; and tried to make herself
remember that after all there were some unstained noble things in the
world by singing whisperingly a verse from the Women's Marseillaise.
"There's many singing that song to-day in prison that would be glad to
sit and breathe fresh air and look at a fine view as you're doing, so
you ought to be thankful!" And indeed the view of the Castle did just
for that moment distract her from the business of weeping, for there had
been a certain violent alteration of the weather. The autumn sunshine,
which had never been more than a sarcasm on the part of a thoroughly
unpleasant day, had failed altogether, and Edinburgh had become a series
of corridors through which there rushed a trampling wind. It set the
dead leaves rising from the pavement in an exasperated, seditious way,
and let them ride dispersedly through the eddying air far above the
heads of the clambering figures that, up and down the side-street, stood
arrested and, it seemed, flattened, as if they had been spatchcocked by
the advancing wind and found great difficulty in folding themselves up
again. She looked at their struggles with contempt. They were funny wee
men. They were not like Yaverland. Now, he was a fine man. She thought
proudly of the enormousness of his chest and shoulders, and imagined the
tremendous thudding thing the heartbeat must be that infused with blood
such hugeness. He must be one of the most glorious men who ever lived.
It surely was not often that a man was perfect in every way physically
and mentally.

She turned away and hid her face against the shutters, weeping bitterly.
But her mind had to follow him in a kind of dream, as he walked on,
master