s
life tolerable. It was not to feast their eyes upon unknown worlds,
or drench their hands in a stream of gold, that the old marauders
of England set forth upon the high seas. Assuredly it must have been,
in the hearts of them, that love of adventure, that desire for the
happenings of strange things which spurred them on to face God in
the wind, to dare Him in the tempest, to brave Him even into the
unknown.

Some of that instinct, but in its various and lesser degrees, is left
in us now. For one moment it rose in the mind of Sally Bishop, as
she turned into Bedford Street and directed her course towards
Piccadilly Circus. It had crossed her mind in suspicion--the uprush
of an idea, as a bubble struggles to the surface--that the man whom
she had found waiting outside the premises of Bonsfield & Co. had
had the intention in his mind to speak to her as she passed. Now,
as she looked sideways when she turned the corner, and found that
he had altered his direction--was following her--the suspicion
became a conviction. She knew.

In the first realization, the thought of adventure thrilled her. A
life, quiet and uneventful such as hers, looks of necessity for its
happiness to the little thrills, the little emotions that combine
to make one day less monotonous than another. But when, having
reached Garrick Street and, looking hurriedly over her shoulder, she
found that not only was he still following, but that he had
perceptibly lessened the distance between them, the spirit of
interest sank--died out, like a candle snuffed in a gale. In that
moment she became afraid.

It is nameless, that terror in the mind of a woman pursued. Yet
without it one of the first of her abstract attractions would be gone.
Undoubtedly it is the joy of the pursuer that the quarry should take
to flight. Would there be any chase without? But long years of study
amongst the more advanced of us have made the fact of rather common
knowledge. The woman has learnt that to be caught there must be flight,
and, in assuming it, she has acquired for herself the instincts of
the pursuer. So an army, resorting to the strategy of retreat, is
still the pursuer in the more subtle sense of the word. It is this
strategy that is cunningly taught in the modern, genteel education
of the sex. The virtue of chastity it is called, but over the length
of time it has come to be a forced growth; it has altered
intrinsically in its composition. Education has learnt to mak