She was stamped on his mind in every detail as she looked at that instant, infinitely desirable, infinitely alluring, in her thin white dress, her full supple woman's body erect and firm with a strong life of its own, her long sensitive hands clasped before her . . . how many times in his dreams had he held them in his . . . her shining dark hair bound smoothly about her head and down low on each side of her rounded forehead. Her thick white eyelids, down-dropped, were lowered over her eyes, and her mouth with its full lips and deep corners . . . at the sight of her mouth on which he had laid that burning kiss, Vincent felt a barrier within him give way . . . here he was at last with the woman he loved, the woman who was going to give herself to him . . . Good God! all these words . . . what did they mean? Nothing. He swept her into his arms and drew her face to his, his eyes closed, lost in the wonder and ecstasy of having reached his goal at last. * * * * * She did not make the startled virginal resistance of a girl. She drew away from him quietly . . . the hatred for that quiet was murderous in him . . . and shook her head. Why, it was almost gently that she shook her head. How dared she act gently to him, as though he were a boy who had made a mistake! How dared she not be stirred and mastered! He felt his head burning hot with anger, and knew that his face must be suffused with red. And hers was not, it was quiet. He could have stamped with rage, and shaken her. He wanted to hurt her at once, deeply, to pierce her and sting her back to life. "Do you mean," he said brutally, "that you find, after all, that you are a cold, narrow, cowardly, provincial woman, stunted by your life, so that you are incapable of feeling a generous heat?" As she remained silent, he was stung by the expression on her face which he did not understand. He went on vindictively snatching up to drive home his thrust the sharpest and cruelest weapon he could conceive, "_Perhaps you find you are too old?_" At this she looked away from him for an instant, up to the lower branches of the oak under which they stood. She seemed to reflect, and when she brought her eyes back to his, she answered, "Yes, I think that is it. I find I am too old." He was for years to ponder on the strangeness of the accent with which she said this, without regret, with that damnable gentleness as though to hide from him a truth he might find hard to bear, or be incapable of understanding. How could any woman say "I find I am too old" with that unregretting accent? Was it not the worst of calamities for all women to grow old? What was there left for a woman when she grew old? But how preposterous, her saying that, she who stood there in the absolute perfection of her bloom!