“I wouldn’t call them reticent today,” he repeated aloud. But his mind raced back over the whole course of his life in Dorset as he looked at her now⁠ ⁠… so virginal⁠ ⁠… and so free from conscience!

Far more⁠—oh, far more than Gerda, who seemed like a recognized, an accepted portion of his destiny⁠—did this evasive little being seem to embody all his hovering, intangible dreams! It was hard to shake off a quivering cloud, beyond the cloud of cigarette-smoke, that dimmed his vision, as he looked at her. How he longed to snatch away that brown dress, wintry-withered as it was, that hid her from him!

“Not reticent, perhaps,” she was saying. “But it’s utterly different in these days, Wolf. They don’t do it for simple, mischievous pleasure. They do it for principle’s sake, for the sake of science, for the sake of a new fashion in art. It’s all premeditated and deliberate.”