her; for has she not had the most impossible dreams all her life? Who is to say that these she is having now are any more reliable than those she had three, four, five or six years ago,—although the subject of them is so entirely different? Still, it is all very strange, _very_ strange; and she regards men with perhaps a trifle more penetration on the morrow, and the day after. The very positive girl may be timid, in fact is, as a rule, very timid in the presence of men, and very self-conscious too. Her body is aware that in this environment it can find its consummation, it would like to find its consummation, and it is therefore all tense and braced with excitement—an excitement that the girl herself does not quite understand, except that it makes her extremely uncomfortable. And it is the difficulty she feels in overcoming her body’s concern that constitutes the strain. This difficulty may easily be understood, however, if we remember that ever since she first became fully formed, her body has silently, but regularly been preparing for the consummation of its destiny. Unbeknown to the girl’s consciousness, though of course she has been aware of the phenomenon, every month Life has prepared her—her body has dressed itself, so to speak, for the act that will lead to the consummation of her destiny,—no wonder that after all these months and years of silent waiting and waiting, and elaborate and minute preparations for the guest, that there should be some bustle, some joyful apprehension, when a potential guest is at hand, or actually waiting. But the mind knows nothing of all this. What in fact is going on in the girl’s mind? All this bodily agitation gets telephoned through correctly enough to the brain; but it is transmitted to consciousness in a form so utterly garbled and inaccurate, that it becomes unintelligible. Consciously, the girl only feels uncomfortable, and sometimes so painfully so that she has to take flight altogether, and retire somewhere alone to recover her self-possession. Charlotte and Emily Brontë had to avert their eyes when they passed an attractive man in the street. You may be quite certain that when a fully formed and decent girl looks boldly and unmoved (as hundreds do nowadays) into the eyes of men—even of the most attractive men—her degree of positiveness is very low indeed, and her body feels very little at all in the presence of the male sex. The whole of the above, of course, applies only to the virgin.