You've no conception what it's like--to be a young woman." She looked straight at him.

"There are terrors and agonies," she said, keeping her eye on him as if to detect the slightest hint of laughter.
"I can believe it," he said.

He returned her look with perfect sincerity.
"Women one sees in the streets," she said.
"Prostitutes ?" "Men kissing one." He nodded his head.
"You were never told ?" She shook her head.
"And then," she began and stopped.

Here came in the great space of life into which no one had ever penetrated.

All that she had been saying about her father and her aunts and walks in Richmond Park, and what they did from hour to hour, was merely on the surface.