no clothes, she was required at home, her strength was insufficient to support the hardships of a day in the fresh air any one of these, or of a dozen further reasons, was, by her timid logic, sufficient to debar her from going. 'I hope it'll keep fine for him,' she murmured as, well pleased, she went back to wash the breakfast dishes, whilst Nessie waved good-bye to her father's back from the parlour window.
When the door had closed behind the master of the house Mary went slowly upstairs to her room, sat down on the edge of her bed and looked out of the window. She did not, in the clear brightness of the morning, see the three tall birch trees, their smooth boles shining with a lustrous sheen, standing upright like silver masts; she did not hear the whispered rustle of the leaves, flickering dark and light as they turned in the faint breeze. Engrossed within herself, she sat thinking of that remark which her father had made, turning it over in her mind uneasily, unhappily. 'Mary, you're getting as big as a house,' he had sneered, meaning, she fully realised, that she
was developing, filling out, as befitted her age and rapid growth.
Nevertheless, that single utterance, like a sudden shaft of light darting in, then out, of the darkness of her ignorance, had suddenly originated in her mind a profound disquiet.
Her mother, like a human ostrich, burying her head nervously at the slightest suggestion of the subject when it appeared on the domestic horizon, had not enlightened her on even the most elementary aspects of sex, and to any direct, ingenuous question which her daughter might address to her in this connection, Mamma would reply, in horror, 'Hush at once, Mary! It's not a nice thing to talk
about. Good girls don't think of such things. That was a shameful thing to ask.' Her acquaintance with other girls had been always so slight that she had never achieved information on this matter through the light, tittering remarks in which even the most simpering, pink and white maidens of the town occasionally indulged. Stray fragments of such conversations which she might have overheard
fell upon uncomprehending ears or were repudiated by the natural delicacy of her feeling, and she had lived in an unconscious simplicity, discrediting perhaps, if she ever considered this, the fable that babies were achieved through the assistance of the stork, but being sublimely unaware of the most rudimentary realities of procreation.
Even now the fact that for three months the normal functions of her body had been disturbed had not ruffled the limpid pool of her virgin mind, but this morning her father's coarse remark, twisted by some hidden convolution of her mind into a different sense, distorted into a different interpretation, had struck her with a crushing violence.
Was she different now? Agitatedly she ran her hands over her limbs and body. It was her body, her own, belonging entirely to herself; how could it have altered? In a panic she jumped up, locked her bedroom door and tore off her cashmere bodice and skirt, her petticoat, her clinging slip, undressed completely until she stood, bewildered, in a chaste nudity, touching her body with confused hands. Never before had she studied her figure with anything but a passing interest. She gazed stupidly at her creamy white skin, raised her arms above her head, lengthened her lithe, lovely figure into a taut, flawless beauty. The small mirror upon her table revealed in its inadequate depths no blemish or imperfection to confirm or allay her unformed fears, and though she twisted her head this way and that, her frightened eyes could detect no branding disfigurement crying aloud of an inward ugliness. She could not tell whether she was different, whether her bosom was fuller, the shell pink of her nipples less delicate, the soft curve of her hips more profound.
A fearful indecision took possession of her. Three months ago, when she had lain in Denis' arms in a state of unconscious surrender, her instincts had blindly guided her, and with closed eyes she had abandoned herself utterly to the powerful currents which permeated her being. Neither reason, had she wished it, nor knowledge, had she possessed it, intervened; in effect, while experiencing the rending emotions of a pain intolerably sweet, and a pleasure unbearably intoxicating, she had been so moved out of her own being that she had known nothing of what was actually taking place. Her feelings then had lifted her above consideration, but now she dimly wondered what mysterious chemistry had been inaugurated by the power of their embrace, if, perhaps, her lips against his, in some strange combination, had altered her irrevocably in some profound,
incomprehensible manner.
She felt powerless, lost in a perplexity of indecision, feeling that she must act to dispel immediately this sudden ferment in her mind, but unaware of how she should accomplish this. As she sombrely resumed the garments that lay scattered around her feet, she abandoned immediately the idea of approaching her mother, knowing well that Mamma's timid soul would leap in terror at the very mention of the topic. Involuntarily she turned towards the thought of Denis, her
perpetual consolation, but instantly, and adding to her dismay, she was aware that she would not see him for at least a week, and she reflected, further, that she might see him on this next occasion for a moment only. Since that wonderful talk with him in Bertorelli's, their meetings had been short although so sweet and by agreement carefully guarded, and whUe such fleeting glimpses of Denis as she thus obtained constituted the only felicity of her life, she felt now conclusively that, in these hasty exchanges of encouragement and love, she would never muster courage to invoke, even indirectly, his advice; at the mere idea a shameful blush pervaded her.
When she was again dressed, she unlorked the door and went downstairs, where Mamma, having finished what she called putting a face on things, had settled down luxuriously to an uninterrupted hour with her book. There were no problems like hers in such books, sadly reflected Mary; no indication in the vows, kissed finger tips, sweet speeches and happy endings, of the elucidation of her difficulty.
'I'll go down to the business with father's message. He asked me to go in the forenoon,' she said, after a moment's indecision, addressing her mother's bowed, rapt figure.
Mrs. Brodie, sitting in the drawing room of a Sussex manor, surrounded by the society of her election, and in earnest conversation with the evangelical vicar of the parish, did not reply, did not even hear her daughter's voice. When immersed in a book she was, as her husband had put it, its slave.
'You're a perfect slave to that trash,' he had once sneered at her, when she had failed to respond to his question. 'To see ye slaverin' ower it is like a drunkard wi' a bottle. Ye wad sit readin' there if the house was burnin' about our ears.'
Observing, therefore, with a clouded eye that it was useless to disturb her mother, that under the present circumstances she could not obtain from her a coherent, still less a comforting word, Mary departed silently and unnoticed, to execute her errand.
On the way to the town she remained immersed in her sad, questioning thoughts, walking limply, her head drooping, with slow steps; but although her journey was thus protracted, she reached her destination before she had even glimpsed the solution of her enigma.
In the shop Peter Perry was alone, lively, expanded, important, in the magnificence of sole responsibility, and he welcomed her with nervous effusion, his face lighting up with delight and his white cheeks becoming even more pale from the joyous shock of seeing her.
'This is an unexpected pleasure indeed, Miss Mary. Not often we have the pleasure of seeing you down at the business! Dear me! A great pleasure! A great pleasure!' he repeated agitatedly, rubbing his thin, transparent, tapering fingers together with quick, rustling movements; then he paused, completely at a loss. He was actually unnerved by the stroke of circumstances which had delivered Mary at the shop on the very day when, her father being absent, he might be permitted to talk to her, and, in his confusion, the scintillating con-
versations he had so frequently conducted in his imagination between himself and a bevy of queenly young ladies of the highest society, and which he regarded as a form of rehearsal for an occasion such as that which now presented itself, fled from him on the four winds. He was silent, he who had longed for this opportune moment, saying, 'If a fellow could get the chance he might cut a pretty good dash with Miss Mary'; and tongue-tied, he who addressed his ironing board, through the steam in the back shop, with fluent, contemptuous ease.
A paralysing dumbness lay upon the man who, in his romantic leisure moments in bed on Sunday mornings, his eye fixed on his brass bed knob as on a coronet, had charmed a duchess with his courtly speech. He felt his flesh wilt, his skin tingle damply, the perspiration exude clammily from his pores; he lost his head completely and, his professional manner taking the bit between its teeth, he blurted out, 'Pray be seated, Madam; what can I do for you to-day?'
He was horrified and what blood lay in his veins rushed painfully to his head, making her image swim before him through a haze of embarrassment. He did not colour that was an impossibility for him but his head swam with giddiness; yet to his amazement and relief, Mary manifested neither indignation nor surprise. In plain truth, her thoughts were still sadly distant, she had not quite recollected herself from the march of her dreary reverie, had not
