She read widely during these years, learned much. Between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-four a woman is capable of vast assimilation of ideas. They can flow into the freshly opened, unpolluted channels of her being, as yet unclogged by the refuse of sorrows and wearinesses. Her rejection of the old formulas, and the paramount necessity of gaining knowledge wherewith to provide herself substitutes, checked in her any impulse towards moral or artistic idealism. She read deeply, instinctively seeking after the roots of life, the elemental passions that shake our nature, be its superstructure never so delicately complex. The dawning knowledge half frightened, half attracted her. The barbaric feminine in her struggled to escape into solitude. With fluttering eyelids downcast it recoiled from the idea of passion as yet unawakened responsively within her. But the higher needs of modernity constrained her to a just, resolute system of inquiry. She learned that there are deeper laws regulating our being than those which could be enunciated at Durdleham tea-tables, where the ingrained habit of non-recognition of them restricted life within narrowest limits, and put, as it were, a prohibition tax upon exoteric sympathy. At four-and-twenty Clytie was a woman--emotional, impulsive, eager to taste of any new experience. The old rebellious habit of mind had developed into a frank independence. Her step was elastic, her bearing confident. Her life was full and happy. “I am glad I am a woman now,” she said to Mrs. Farquharson. “I seem to have all the advantages of both sexes.” “Wait till you're married, my dear,” replied her friend. Mrs. Farquharson was fond of the use of affectionate irritants. They are often valuable preservatives of friendship. Clytie laughed. “I suppose I shall marry some day. I don't want to end up by leading half a life; but I want to have two or three years more of this. I must play at being a man a little longer.” “A pretty sort of man!” said Mrs. Farquharson, resting her chin on her hand and looking at Clytie with amused eyes. “You are the most deliciously feminine young woman I know. Look at your frock and your hair.” Judging by outward appearances Mrs. Farquharson's criticism was correct. Clytie had the artistic sense in dress. It was like most of her other artistic impulses, with the personal note dominant--soft textures, falling easily into folds, quiet in tone, dark grays, subdued half shades of yellows, suddenly brightened by a small, daring flash of colour at throat or bosom. Lace, with its creamy, clinging softness delighted her, and she wore it defiantly, with a certain sense of triumph that she was perhaps the only girl in England who could wear it with faultless taste.