experience or
her thoughts at the time of her marriage; it had certainly not been the
moving force for Jerry, either.

She felt that Baby justified her somewhat. She had refused none of the
responsibilities imposed upon her by her union with Jerry.

But, on the other hand, as she had said to him before Martin, her soul
and her senses had found no common speech.

Intellectually she examined herself in relation to Jerry and found
herself guilty. She had kept secret, between herself and Martin, the
really big impulse of her life. Through a childish fear of ridicule, she
had deliberately shut him out of the inner chamber of her thoughts and
hopes. Was this fair?

To be sure, he had not shared with her his inner thoughts and ambitions.
He had not sought to bring her into any closer mental relationship with
him. Was he, too, held back by fear of her laughter?

When she looked into her mind, it was flooded with Martin. He was in
every nook and cranny of it. He invaded it like an army with banners.
Her whole growth and development had been so accelerated by him that it
seemed as if she had stood in one spot always until he arrived. No
wonder she had not turned to Jerry for companionship when she had been
swallowed up, as it were, in the microcosm which was Martin
Christiansen.

But when it came to the world of the senses, she had spoken the absolute
truth when she told Jerry that she had never once thought of Martin with
sentiment--in the ordinary sex sense of that word. He was
master-counsellor, god, but never man-mate. So the moment of his passion
had come upon her like a lightning flash, rending the heavens, levelling
her house of life to the grounds, leaving her naked and terror-struck.

With the shock of it had come a vision of what love might be. With it
had come a pitiless revelation of what her union with Jerry was. It was
this cataclysm of her whole world that made her run away into solitude
to try and get herself together.

She tried again and again to reconstruct the scene with Martin--to try
to recapture her sensations of the moment she was in his arms. Had it
been rapture, or only surprise? Had it been a surge of gratitude to him
because he loved her? After all, he was the first man to say his
devotion to her. Jerry had made no protestations of love; she had
expected none. Were not her feelings, at the moment, those of any woman
when she is told for the first time that she is loved?

She thought of herse