In the contest rageing at mid-sea still between the man and the woman, it is the one who is hard to the attractions of the other that will make choice of the spot and have the advantages.  A short time earlier Lord Ormont could have marked it out at his leisure.  He would have been unable to comprehend why it was denied him to do so now; for he was master of himself, untroubled by conscience, unaware, since he was assured of his Aminta’s perfect safety and his restored sense of possession, that any taint of softness in him had reversed the condition of their alliance.  He felt benevolently the much he had to bestow, and was about to bestow.  Meanwhile, without complicity on his part, without his knowledge, yet absolutely involving his fate, the battle had gone against him in Aminta’s breast.

Like many of his class and kind, he was thoroughly acquainted with the physical woman, and he took that first and very engrossing volume of the great Book of Mulier for all the history.  A powerful wing of imagination, strong as the flappers of the great Roc of Arabian story, is needed to lift the known physical woman even a very little way up into azure heavens.  It is far easier to take a snap-shot at the psychic, and tumble her down from her fictitious heights to earth.  The mixing of the two make nonsense of her.  She was created to attract the man, for an excellent purpose in the main.  We behold her at work incessantly.  One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light.  By the various arts at her disposal she will have us, unless early in life we tear away the creature’s coloured gauzes and penetrate to her absurdly simple mechanism.  That done, we may, if we please, dominate her.  High priests of every religion have successively denounced her as the chief enemy.  To subdue and bid her minister to our satisfaction is therefore a right employment of man’s unperverted superior strength.  Of course, we keep to ourselves the woman we prefer; but we have to beware of an uxorious preference, or we are likely to resemble the Irishman with his wolf, and dance imprisoned in the hug of our captive.

For it is the creature’s characteristic to be lastingly awake, in her moments of utmost slavishness most keenly awake to the chances of the snaring of the stronger.  Be on guard, then.  Lord Ormont had been on guard then and always:  his instinct of commandership kept him on guard.  He was on guard now when his Aminta played, not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent.  She did it well, he admitted.

Had it been the indignant she played, he might have stooped to cajole the handsome queen of gypsies she was, without acknowledgement of her right to complain.  Feeling that he was about to be generous, he shrugged.  He meant to speak in deeds.

Lady Charlotte’s house was at the distance of a stroller’s half-hour across Hyde Park westward from his own.  Thither he walked, a few minutes after noon, prepared for cattishness.  He could fancy that he had hitherto postponed the visit rather on her account, considering that he would have to crush her if she humped and spat, and he hoped to be allowed to do it gently.  There would certainly be a scene.