The hour was over,--the boatman rowed me in to land, and I paid and dismissed him. The sun had completely sunk,--there were dense purple shadows darkening over the mountains, and one or two small stars faintly discernible in the east. I walked slowly back to the villa where we were staying,--a 'dépendance' belonging to the large hotel of the district, which we had rented for the sake of privacy and independence, some of the hotel-servants being portioned off to attend upon us, in addition to my own man Morris, and my wife's maid. I found Sibyl in the garden, reclining in a basket-chair, her eyes fixed on the after-glow of the sunset, and in her hands a book,--one of the loathliest of the prurient novels that have been lately written by women to degrade and shame their sex. With a sudden impulse of rage upon me which I could not resist, I snatched the volume from her and flung it into the lake below. She made no movement of either surprise or offence,--she merely turned her eyes away from the glowing heavens, and looked at me with a little smile. "How violent you are to-day, Geoffrey!" she said. I gazed at her in sombre silence. From the light hat with its pale mauve orchids that rested on her nut-brown hair, to the point of her daintily embroidered shoe, her dress was perfect,--and _she_ was perfect. _I_ knew that,--a matchless piece of womanhood ... outwardly! My heart beat,--there was a sense of suffocation in my throat,--I could have killed her for the mingled loathing and longing which her beauty roused in me. "I am sorry!" I said hoarsely, avoiding her gaze--"But I hate to see you with such a book as that!" "You know its contents?" she queried, with the same slight smile. "I can guess." "Such things have to be written, they say nowadays,"--she went on--"And, certainly, to judge from the commendation bestowed on these sort of books by the press, it is very evident that the wave of opinion is setting in the direction of letting girls know all about marriage before they enter upon it, in order that they may do so with their eyes wide open,--_very_ wide open!" She laughed, and her laughter hurt me like a physical wound. "What an old-fashioned idea the bride of the poets and sixty-years-ago romancists seems now!" she continued--"Imagine her!--a shrinking tender creature, shy of beholders, timid of speech, ... wearing the emblematic veil, which in former days, you know, used to cover the face entirely, as a symbol that the secrets of marriage were as yet hidden from the maiden's innocent and ignorant eyes. Now the veil is worn flung back from the bride's brows, and she stares unabashed at everybody,--oh yes, indeed we know quite well what we are doing now when we marry, thanks to the 'new' fiction!"