“Maybe. But I’ve got common-sense. If you think you’re going to London to stand for Parliament or write poetry and get it printed or run a Home for Incurable Camels, you’re mistaken, dear. And you’ll have no truck with women. You’ve never had a woman friend in the world—anyone you’d die for.” “Of course I haven’t,” snapped Olivia. “It’s a man’s woman you are,” continued Myra. “You’ve looked after men ever since your dear mother was taken ill. It’s what God meant you to do. It’s all you can do. And you haven’t got a man and that’s what’s making you unhappy.” Olivia sprang from her chair, looking with her long black hair ruffled and frizzed and spreading out around her warm oval face, like an angry sea-nymph on a rock disputed by satyrs. “I hate men and everything connected with them.” “You still hate your husband?” asked Myra looking at her with cold pale eyes. “I loathe him. How dare you? Haven’t I forbidden you to mention his name?” “I didn’t mention his name,” said Myra. “But if you like, I won’t refer to him again. Sit down and let me put on the electric dryer. Your hair’s still wringing wet.” She yielded, not with good grace. Myra had her at her mercy. Dignity counselled instant dismissal of Myra from her presence. But the washing and drying of her long thick hair had ever been a problem; so dignity gave way to comfort. She was furious with Myra. We all are with people who confront us with the naked truth about ourselves. That was all she was fit for; all that life had taught her; to look after a man. She stared at the blatant proposition in the grimness of the night-watches. What else, in God’s name, was she capable of doing for an inch advancement of humanity? She had gone forth long ago—so it seemed—from Medlow, to open the mysterious mysteries of the world. She had opened them—and all the pearls, good, bad and indifferent, were men. All the ideals; all the colour and music and gorgeous edifices of life; all the world vibration of thought and action and joy of which she had dreamed, every manifold thrill that had run through her being from feet to hair on that first night in London when she had leaned out of her Victoria Street flat and opened her young soul to the informing spirit of the vast city of mystery—the whole spiritual meaning, nay, the whole material reason for her existence, was resolved into one exquisitely pure, bafflingly translucent in its mystery of shooting flames, utterly elemental crystal of sex. Sex, in its supreme purity; but sex all the same.