g down the court from the stage
door, with Maurice suddenly appearing round the corner to drive
weariness out of London. It was glorious to think of someone who could
make the worst headache insignificant and turn the most unsatisfactory
morning to a perfect afternoon. Quickened by such thoughts, she got into
bed without waking May, so that in a flutter of soft kisses she could
sink deliciously to sleep, enclosed in the arms of her lover as an
orchard by sunlight.

About two o'clock Jenny woke up to another psychic experience not
unusual with hypersensitive temperaments. The ardor of the farewell
embrace had consumed all the difficulties of the situation discussed on
the journey home. This ardor of merely sensuous love had lasted long
enough to carry her off to sleep drowsed by a passionate content.
Meanwhile her brain, working on what was originally the more vital
emotion, brought her back to consciousness in the middle of the
problem's statement. Lying there in the darkness, Jenny blushed hotly,
so instant was the mental attitude produced by Maurice's demand. In
previous encounters over this subject, her protagonists had all been so
manifestly contemptible, their expectations so evident from the
beginning, that their impudence had been extinguished by the fire of
merely social indignation. Jenny had defeated them as the representative
of her sex rather than herself. She had never comprehended the
application of their desires to herself as a feasible proposition. They
were a fact merely objectively unpleasant like monkeys in a cage,
physically dangerous, however, with certain opportunities Jenny's
worldly wisdom would never afford. In the case of Maurice the encounter
was actual, involving a clash of personalities: the course of her
behavior would have to be settled. No longer fortified by the hostility
of massed opinion, she would be compelled to entrust her decision to
personal resolution and individual judgment. For the first time she was
confronted with the great paradox that simultaneously restricts and
extends a woman's life. She remembered the effect of Edie's announcement
of surrender. It had sickened her with virginal wrath and impressed her
with a sense of man's malignity, and now here was she at the cross-roads
of experience with sign-posts unmistakable to dominate her mental
vision.

It was not astonishing that Jenny should blush with the consciousness of
herself as a vital entity; for the situation was m