youngster tempted by wealth, attracted, besought, snared, revolted, etc.  And Mrs. Burman, when roused to jealousy, had shown it by teazing him for a confession of his admiration of splendid points in the beautiful Nataly, the priceless fair woman living under their roof, a contrast of very life, with the corpse and shroud; and she seen by him daily, singing with him, her breath about him, her voice incessantly upon every chord of his being!

He pleaded successfully.  But the silence following the verdict was heavy; the silence contained an unheard thunder.  It was the sound, as when out of Court the public is dissatisfied with a verdict.  Are we expected to commit a social outrage in exposing our whole case to the public?—­Imagine it for a moment as done.  Men are ours at a word—­or at least a word of invitation.  Women we woo; fluent smooth versions of our tortures, mixed with permissible courtship, win the individual woman.  And that unreasoning collective woman, icy, deadly, condemns the poor racked wretch who so much as remembers them!  She is the enemy of Nature.—­Tell us how?  She is the slave of existing conventions.—­And from what cause?  She is the artificial production of a state that exalts her so long as she sacrifices daily and hourly to the artificial.

Therefore she sides with Mrs. Burman—­the foe of Nature:  who, with her arts and gold lures, has now possession of the Law (the brass idol worshipped by the collective) to drive Nature into desolation.

He placed himself to the right of Mrs. Burman, for the world to behold the couple:  and he lent the world a sigh of disgust.

What he could not do, as in other matters he did, was to rise above the situation, in a splendid survey and rapid view of the means of reversing it.  He was too social to be a captain of the socially insurgent; imagination expired.

But having a courageous Nataly to second him!—­how then?  It was the succour needed.  Then he would have been ready to teach the world that Nature—­honest Nature—­is more to be prized than Convention:  a new Era might begin.

The thought was tonic for an instant and illuminated him springingly.  It sank, excused for the flaccidity by Nataly’s want of common adventurous daring.  She had not taken to Lakelands; she was purchasing furniture from a flowing purse with a heavy heart—­unfeminine, one might say; she preferred to live obscurely; she did not, one had to think—­but it was unjust:  and yet the accusation, that she did not cheerfully make a strain and spurt on behalf of her child, pressed to be repeated.