ur
of the Wynthrops, and it was love at first sight, with him. He had been
forced to attend the ball against his will, only to meet his fate, it
would seem.

Thereafter, he had been obsessed with one ambition, and that was to win
Joyce for his wife, in spite of the fact that he was fifteen years her
senior and held an appointment in the East.

Touched by his devotion and influenced by the opinion of others, she had
yielded, feeling that Destiny was calling to her to fulfill her
obligations to Life. Marriage with a good man of irreproachable
antecedents, and children to rear in godliness and wisdom, was the
religion of her upbringing. It had been impressed upon her as the
natural vocation of woman so that the race might continue. She had
played with dolls as the proper playthings of her childhood, and was
prepared to exchange them for the children God should send her in some
mysterious way to which marriage was the true gateway. Raymond Meredith,
good-looking, kind, eligible, and full of love for herself was obviously
the "Mr. Right" of schoolgirl tradition; the man to whom it would be
correct to give herself in the bonds of holy matrimony, even as her
mother had long ago given herself to her father--an example of
unemotional attachment and tranquil orthodoxy.

At first it had been wofully embarrassing to be made love to; and she
wondered if her mother had been kissed so often and called all those
silly love-names by her father before they were married?

She also resisted the strange effect on herself of those ardent kisses,
and was afraid to encourage feelings she had never before experienced,
believing them immodest to indulge, and something she had to subdue with
a determined effort. She would die sooner than confess to them. Passion
might be all right for men with whom every initiative of life lay, but
unbecoming for women to acknowledge, even to themselves. In fact, Joyce
Wynthrop was a product of Early Victorian views on the subject of a
girl's training, and an anachronism in modern times. She had been reared
in rigid ignorance of life, her reading having been heavily restricted,
her associates selected, so that when the time came to hand her over to
a husband, he should find her beautifully unconscious and unique.

To Meredith, her shy submission to his caresses, and her passionless
response were the surest guarantee of her virginal past, and he was in
no hurry to awaken the sleeping beauty to a deeper knowle