He began to feel extremely attracted to this intelligent head. He had been living for the last week or so in the steady conviction that he should never get the right sensual angle with this girl. It was a queer feeling, after all, to see his sensuality speaking sense. He would marry her. “Well,” she said, with pleasant American accent in speaking English, “I feel you see some disability in sensible women that does not exist. It doesn’t irritate you too much to hear a woman talking about it?” “Of course not—_you_. You are so handsome. I shouldn’t like it if you were less so. Such good looks” (he rolled his eyes appreciatively) “get us out of arty coldness. You are all right. The worst of looks like yours is that sense has about the same effect as nonsense. Sense is a delightful anomaly just as rot would be! You don’t require words or philosophy. But they give one a pleasant tickling all the same.” “I am glad you are learning. However, don’t praise me like that. It makes me a little shy. I know how you feel about women. You feel that good sense gets in the way.” “It interferes with the senses, you mean? I don’t think I feel that altogether⸺” “You feel I’m not a woman, don’t you? Not properly a woman, like your Bertha. There’s no mistake about her!” “One requires something unconscious, perhaps. I’ve never met any woman who interested me but was ten times more stupid than I. I want _to be alone_ in those things. I like it to be subterranean as well.” “Well, I have a cave! I’ve got all that, too. I _promise_ you.” Her _promise_ was slow and lisping. Tarr once more had to deal with himself. “I—am—_a woman_; not a man. That is the fact.” (“Fact” was long and American.) “You don’t realize that—I assure you I am!” She looked at him with a soft, steady smile, that drew his gaze and will into her, rather than imposed itself on him. “I know.” He felt that there was not much to say. “No, you know far less than you think. See here; I set out thinking of you in this way—‘Nothing but a female booby will please that man!’ I wanted to please you, but I couldn’t do it on those lines. I’m going to make an effort along my own lines. You are like a youngster who hasn’t got used to the taste of liquor; you don’t like it. You haven’t grown up yet. I want to make you drunk and see what happens!” She had her legs crossed. Extremely white flesh showed above the black Lisle silk, amidst linen as expensive as the outer cloth was plain. This clever alternating of the humble and gorgeous! Would the body be plain? The provocation was merely a further argument. It said, “Young man, what is there you find in your Bertha that cannot be provided along with superior sense?” His Mohammedan eye did not refuse the conventional bait. His butcher’s sensibility pressed his fancy into professional details. What with her words and her acts he was in a state of strong confusion.