n at home; she had no friend of her own
sex to fill it as most girls have, and a nature like hers, rich in
every healthy possibility, was bound to crave for love early. It was
all very well for her mother and society as it is constituted to
ignore the needs of nature; by Beth herself they would not be ignored.
In most people, whether the senses or the intellect will have the
upper-hand is very much a matter of early training.

Because she was a girl, Beth's intellect had been left to stagnate for
want of proper occupation or to run riot in any vain pursuit she might
happen upon by accident, while her senses were allowed to have their
way, unrestrained by any but the vaguest principles. Thanks to her
free roving outdoor habits, her life was healthy if it were not happy,
and she promised to mature early. Youth and sex already began to hang
out their signals--clear skin, slim figure, light step, white teeth,
thick hair, bright eyes. She was approaching her blossoming time, the
end of her wintry childhood, the beginning of a promising spring. It
was natural and right that her pulses should quicken and her spirits
rise when a young man met her with a friendly glance. Her whole being
was suffused with the glory of love, and her mind held the vision; but
it was of an abstract kind as yet, not inspired by man. It was in
herself that the emotion arose, in happy exuberance, and bubbled over,
expending itself in various forms of energy until it should find one
object to concentrate itself upon. There comes a time to all healthy
young people when Nature says: "Mate, my children, and be happy." If
the impulse come prematurely, it is not the young people, but the old
ones that are to blame; they should have seen to it that the
intellect, which acts as a curb on the senses when properly trained
and occupied, developed first. Beth was just at the age when the
half-educated girl has nothing to distract her but her own emotions.
Her religion, and the young men who are beginning to make eyes at her,
interest her then about equally, and in much the same way; she owes to
each a pleasurable sensation. If she can combine the two under one
roof, as in church, they suffice and her happiness is complete. It
cannot be said, however, that the senses awoke before the intellect in
Beth; but because of the irregularities of her training, the want of
discipline and order, they took possession of her first.

Passing a shop-window, Beth caught a reflec