tion he had not yet felt for any woman; a statement which to the half-cynical might prove again that John Hampstead was a very inexperienced and very monk-minded youth indeed to be abroad in the unromanticism of this twentieth century. Yet the fact remains that Hampstead did not consciously conspire to violate the neutrality of this tiny, alluring haunt of tantalizing beauty which lurked bewitchingly between the red lower lip and the white firm chin of Miss Marien Dounay.
But there were other things that John was learning swiftly, some of which amounted to positive disillusionment. One was that a woman's body is not necessarily so sacred nor so inviolate, after all. That instead of inviolate, it may be made inviolable by a sort of desexing at will. Miss Dounay could do this and did do it, so that for instance when her form stiffened in his arms, it was no more like what he supposed the touch of a woman's body should be than a post. In the first place the body itself, beneath that trim, tailored suit, appeared to be sheathed in steel from the shoulder almost to the knee. John had supposed that corsets were to confine the waist. This one, if that were what it was and not some sort of armor put on for these rehearsals, encased the whole body.
Another thing that contributed to this desexing of the female person was Miss Dounay's bearing toward himself. He might have been a mere mechanical device for any regard she showed him at rehearsals. She pushed or pulled him about, commanded the bend and adjustment of his arms as if he had been an artificial man, and never by any hint indicated that she thought of him as a person, least of all as a male person. Undoubtedly this robbed his new adventure of some of its spice. But a change came. When for five days John was undecided whether he should admire this manner of hers as supreme
