I was severely chidden for my long absence and ordered during the next week to wear the Skirt of Punishment, a garment of the shape fashionable among women at the time of the great change. Poor Audrey could not help laughing when she saw me in it, but having no other clothes I had to put off all thought of escape until I was released from punishment. Never before had I realised how cramped the mind could become from the confinement of the legs. My week in a skirt came very near to breaking my spirit. Another four days of it and I believe I should have grovelled in submissive adoration before my tyrant. Only my nightly visits to Audrey kept me in courage and resolution. VIII: A STRANGE WOOING The youngest of the women in the homestead was the last to speak to me. She was dark and not uncomely, and I had often noticed her at the readings smile rather fearfully at her own thoughts. Once my eyes had met hers and I was shocked by the direct challenge of her gaze. At the time I was disturbed and uneasy, but soon forgot and took no notice of the woman except that I felt vaguely that she was unhappy. But soon I was always meeting her. I would find her lurking in the rooms as I came to scrub and clean them. Or she would appear in the lane as I came home from the fields, or I would meet her in the doorway, so that I could not help brushing against her. A little later I missed one of my stockings as I got up in the morning and had to go barefoot until I had knitted another pair. One night as I was creeping off to my poor Audrey, now deadly weary of her close quarters in the hay, to my horror I met this woman clad in her night attire. She vanished and I went my way thoroughly frightened. I told Audrey to be ready to come with me next day, for we were spied upon and could not now wait, as we had planned, until my little thefts from the larder had given us a sufficient store of food. Nothing happened the next day and I gave up my determination to ransack the larder. That night as I opened the door I found the woman pressed against it, so that she fell almost into my arms. She clung to me wildly, assured me that I was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and tried to press me back into my room, her tone, her whole bearing conveying an invitation about which it was impossible to be mistaken. It chilled me to the heart, coming as it did so suddenly out of the coldness engendered by the rigid separation of the sexes and the deliberate humiliation of men in that woman-ridden region. As gently as I could I put her from me, though it was not so easy, and I rushed out into the night. I could not tell Audrey what had happened, but as soon as I saw her I felt that the moment for our escape had come. If we did not seize it I should be denounced and tickled, if not worse. We crept away and made straight across the fields and at dawn hid in a wood. IX: THE RUINED CITY