e ages of seventeen and
fifty. Even the curate was grey-haired and married. She had made up for
this deprivation during the voyage out to India and her season in
Calcutta; but, although she had found many men ready to flirt with her,
Norton's proposal was the only serious one that she had had and she
accepted him in desperation. She had never felt any love for him. She
did not realise that he had any for her; for, although he really
entertained a sincere affection of a kind for her, it was so seldom and
so badly expressed that she was never aware of its existence. Since her
marriage she had had several careless flirtations during her visits to
her relatives in Calcutta; but her heart was not seriously affected.

She never acknowledged to herself that any gratitude or loyalty was due
from her to her husband. On the contrary she felt that she owed him, as
well as Fate, a grudge. She was young, warmblooded, of a passionate
temperament, yet she found herself wedded to a man who apparently needed
a housekeeper, not a wife. Her husband did not appear to realise that a
woman is not essentially different to a man, that she has feelings,
desires, passions, just as he has--although by a polite fiction the
prudish Anglo-Saxon races seem to agree to regard her as of a more
spiritual, more ethereal and less earthly a nature. Yet it is only a
fiction after all. Violet was a living woman, a creature of flesh and
blood who was not content to be a chattel, a household ornament, a piece
of furniture. It was not to be wondered at that she longed to enter into
woman's kingdom, to exercise the power of her sex to sway the other and
to experience the thrill of the realisation of that power. Often in her
loneliness she pined to see eyes she loved look with love into hers. She
was not a marble statue. It was but natural that she should long for
Love, a lover, the clasp of strong arms, the pressure of a man's broad
chest against her bosom, the feel of burning kisses on her lips, the
glorious surrender of her whole being to some adored one to whom she was
the universe, who lived but for her.

Now for the first time in her life her errant dreams took concrete
shape. At last she began to feel the companionship of a particular man
necessary for her happiness. She had never before realised the
pleasure, the joy, to be derived from the presence of one of the
opposite sex who was in sympathy, in perfect harmony with her nature.

In her lonely hours-