She had never been tormented by womanhood, and she had lived in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy, dense even to the full significance of that delicate master's delicate allusions to the grossnesses that intrude upon the relations of queens and knights.

She had been asleep, always, and now life was thundering imperatively at all her doors.

Mentally she was in a panic to shoot the bolts and drop the bars into place, while wanton instincts urged her to throw wide her portals and bid the deliciously strange visitor to enter in.
Martin waited with satisfaction for her verdict.

He had no doubt of what it would be, and he was astounded when he heard her say: "It is beautiful." "It is beautiful," she repeated, with emphasis, after a pause.
Of course it was beautiful; but there was something more than mere beauty in it, something more stingingly splendid which had made beauty its handmaiden.

He sprawled silently on the ground, watching the grisly form of a great doubt rising before him.