"At any rate,"--she went on, her eyes darkening with the intensity of her feeling--"you have not polluted your pen with the vileness common to many of the authors of the day. I ask you, do you think a girl can read the books that are now freely published, and that her silly society friends tell her to read,--'because it is so dreadfully _queer_!'--and yet remain unspoilt and innocent? Books that go into the details of the lives of outcasts?--that explain and analyse the secret vices of men?--that advocate almost as a sacred duty 'free love' and universal polygamy?--that see no shame in introducing into the circles of good wives and pure-minded girls, a heroine who boldly seeks out a man, _any_ man, in order that she may have a child by him, without the 'degradation' of marrying him? I have read all those books,--and what can you expect of me? Not innocence, surely! I despise men,--I despise my own sex,--I loathe myself for being a woman! You wonder at my fanaticism for Mavis Clare,--it is only because for a time her books give me back my self-respect, and make me see humanity in a nobler light,--because she restores to me, if only for an hour, a kind of glimmering belief in God, so that my mind feels refreshed and cleansed. All the same, you must not look upon me as an innocent young girl Geoffrey,--a girl such as the great poets idealized and sang of,--I am a contaminated creature, trained to perfection in the lax morals and prurient literature of my day." I looked at her in silence, pained, startled, and with a sense of shock, as though something indefinably pure and precious had crumbled into dust at my feet. She rose and began pacing the room restlessly, moving to and fro with a slow yet fierce grace that reminded me against my wish and will of the movement of some imprisoned and savage beast of prey.