But there is something she does expect, something she has a right to expect; and that is that her husband himself should be her guide, her mentor and initiator. From time immemorial it is his sex that has been _prehensile_. Throughout the higher animal kingdom, prehension in the sex act is the exclusive attribute of the male. He often has the organs for it, and he almost always has the superior strength for it—even when his strength is not required for other purposes. But just think what prehension means! It involves initiation; it means taking the first steps; it is certainly tantamount to setting the tone, the manner, the order of an encounter. Traditionally, then, for millions of years the male has had his particular rôle, the rôle of prehension, with all its correlative virtues and qualities. Before self-consciousness dawned in the human being, he was prehensile in the sexual act—and his rôle therein involved, as I think it necessary to repeat, powers of initiation, the ability to take the first steps, the necessary mastery over sex, to set the tone, the manner and the order of the sexual encounter. What does all this imply? It is obvious! It implies that for an equal number of millions of years the female of the species has expected this prehension and all its correlative qualities in the male. It means that now, to this very day, her deepest feelings tell her that it is only right, only proper, and only becoming, that he should possess and display a certain mastery, a certain free virtuosity—that virtuosity of a flame in a roaring fire—in the matter of sex, and that his very ardour, his very virtuosity, his very ease in mastery, should finally seal the coffin of all that guilty feeling towards sex which she had almost killed in her youth, and which she now expects to be buried once and for all. This, positive Woman understands. This is what she has a right to expect; this is what makes her serene, content, free in conscience and in gait, confident that life is worth living and that her positive impulses have been correct all along. But what is it that happens so frequently that often a sense of shame regarding sex actually begins in a positive woman on the very day of her marriage—never again to be completely dissipated?