To this pitch of intimacy had the past three weeks brought them--a long enough period for an infinite number of things to happen--none the less real for being subjective. Nothing had changed in their external lives. Hammerdyke went into society, read a paper here and there on his travels, digested many bad dinners and worse flattery, played cards, smoked, and drank with his fellows. Clytie painted assiduously, read, exchanged visits with her friends. Kent was missing from her life. She saw him rarely, at odd moments, when they talked commonplaces and avoided by tacit consent the subject of their disunion. They were “league-sundered by the silent gulf between.” He told her that he was thinking of accepting an offer privately made to him by one of the heads of his department, of leave of absence for three months for the purpose of studying the numismatic collections of certain foreign capitals. The prospect was enticing, as he could thus have the run of the continental libraries, whereby his own great work could be considerably advanced. Clytie listened kindly, wished him good luck. He went from her sad at heart, and she was angry with herself and humiliated at feeling somewhat relieved at the idea of his absence. It was not that she regretted the old life less. Its memories were still precious. But Kent's departure would clear the way to a better understanding of herself. Much had happened during the past three weeks--the discovery of a new world for Clytie in which all was strange, beset with vague dangers, vibrating with a tremulous joy akin to terror. She had been lifted off her feet, hurried against her will into a whirl of new sensations. At first she resisted with fierce virgin pride; then gradually she began to close her eyes for a short sweet spell and allow herself to be drifted by the current; finally she gave up struggling. The history of most women at their first contact with passion. The story of this period is very simple. In its first developments love is usually not ultra complex. Given a man and a woman and conditions for meeting freely alone; further, a sudden overmastering passion on the part of the man, a half known, unfulfilled need in the woman; given these premises, and a child can deduce the result. It is the fundamental law of sex. Only when the sentimentalities and more delicate affinities come into play, when the needs of the finer animal man begin to cry after their satisfying, does love leave its simple phase and gird itself with its infinite many-coloured web of complexities. At first the mind may see the web glimmering in a far-away twilight--but heeds it not as long as the sense is held captive.