Like thunder, the stable clock struck four.

She remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that womenmust be obedient, chaste,scented, and exquisitely apparelled. 'Now Ishall have to pay in my own person for those desires,' she reflected;'for women are not (judging by my own short experience of the sex)obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled by nature. They canonly attain these graces, without which they may enjoy none of thedelights of life, by the most tedious discipline. There's thehairdressing,' she thought, 'that alone will take an hour of my morning,there's looking in the looking-glass, another hour; there's staying andlacing; there's washing and powdering; there's changing from silk to laceand from lace to paduasoy; there's being chaste year in year out...' Hereshe tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. Asailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started soviolently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skinof his teeth. 'If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellowwho, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity,keep them covered,' Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chiefestbeauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to whenall a woman's beauty has to be kept covered lest a sailor may fall from amast-head. 'A pox on them!' she said, realizing for the first time what,in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is tosay, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood.

An apple cleft in two is not more twinThan these two creatures.