'But Mr. Durance is right, we require a shedding; I confess I expect
it where there's love; it's part of the balance, and justifies one's
excitement. How otherwise do you get any real crisis? I must read and
live something unlike this flat life around us.'

'There's the Adam life and the Macadam life, Fenellan says. Pass it in
books, but in life we can have quite enough excitement coming out of our
thoughts. No brandy there! And no fine name for personal predilections
or things done in domino!' Victor said, with his very pleasant face,
pressing her hand, to keep the act of long holding it in countenance and
bring it to a well-punctuated conclusion: thinking involuntarily of the
other fair woman, whose hand was his, and who betrayed a beaten visage
despite--or with that poor kind of--trust in her captain. But the
thought was not guilty of drawing comparisons. 'This is one that I could
trust, as captain or mate,' he pressed the hand again before dropping
it.

'You judge entirely by the surface, if you take me for a shifty person
at the trial,' said Lady Grace.

Skepsey entered the room with one of his packets, and she was reminded
of trains and husbands.

She left Victor uncomfortably rufed: and how? for she had none of the
physical charms appealing peculiarly to the man who was taken with
grandeur of shape. She belonged rather to the description physically
distasteful to him.

It is a critical comment on a civilization carelessly distilled from the
jealous East, when visits of fair women to City offices can have this
effect. If the sexes are separated for an hour, the place where one is
excluded or not common to see, becomes inflammable to that appearing
spark. He does outrage to a bona Dea: she to the monasticism of the
Court of Law: and he and she awaken unhallowed emotions. Supposing,
however, that western men were to de-orientalize their gleeful notions
of her, and dis-Turk themselves by inviting the woman's voluble tongue
to sisterly occupation there in the midst of the pleading Court, as
in the domestic circle: very soon would her eyes be harmless: unless
directed upon us with intent.

That is the burning core of the great Question, our Armageddon in
Morality: Is she moral? Does she mean to be harmless? Is she not
untamable Old Nature? And when once on an equal footing with her lordly
half, would not the spangled beauty, in a turn, like the realistic
transformation-trick of a pantomime, show herself to be