From Thornton seemed to come realisation that something stronger, more real, positive lay beyond them--the delight of living in pulse and nerve and bodily fibre. Yet, unlike a man, a woman cannot live by sense alone. Sentiment invariably plays its part. This in Clytie's case was fed by the glamour of Thornton's heroic history, so different from that of ordinary men, whose lives, compared with his, seemed tame and colourless. The glow of his personality bathed magically all his actions, all his words. In his superb manhood he stood before her eyes as the incarnation of physical force, the victorious protest against the shams of art, culture, and other pale shades of our morbid civilisation. When she was lifted high with him in this triumph, sense and sentiment were fused together and she was wholly at his mercy. Thornton had come into her life at the most delicately critical moment of a woman's career, when the current of her nature, checked at the turning-point between friendship and love, struggles tumultuously for some other channel into which to empty itself. “We shall do whatever you like,” she said to Thornton, during their waltz. It was the first definite surrender she had made to him. She was surprised that it cost her so little, seemed so sweet and natural. “Then you and I will defy the world!” he replied. They paused to rest for a moment, leaning against the wall. An elderly man came up, shook hands with her, and opened a desultory conversation with Thornton. Clytie looked amusedly at the animated scene, tabulating mentally, by force of habit, the types that passed and repassed before her. Seldom had it struck her before so forcibly how few of her fellow-creatures possessed the secret of the joy of life. How many of the couples circling round, backing, glissading in that dizzying mass of motion were really gladdened by what they were doing? Stout men puffed around with a serious air of responsibility. Tall men, with drooping moustaches, paced languidly in time, scarcely heeding their partners, who expressionlessly suffered themselves to be guided hither and thither through the throng. The robust youth of either sex seemed to look upon dancing as an athletic exercise, and waltzed with the intent fervour of tennis players on their mettle before a big gallery. Only here and there did a girl, safe in the arms of a good dancer, half close her eyes and surrender herself to the sensuous charm of motion in perfect time with the throbs of music. Mankind is astonishingly ignorant of the essential qualities of many of its habitual pleasures. So thought Clytie, in the thrill of her new knowledge. The orchestra began the opening bars of the _coda_. Thornton turned away from the elderly gentleman, and putting his arm round Clytie's waist led her away, without a word, to finish the waltz.