tiveness, the fatal delicacy, the highly-strung
nervousness of the feminine nature.' My dear lady, if you had lived as
long as I have, you would know that these are mere stock phrases--for
the most part meaningless. As a rule, women are less sensitive than
men. There are many of your sex who are nothing but lumps of lymph and
fatty matter--women with less instinct than the dumb beasts, and with
more brutality. There are others who,--adding the low cunning of the
monkey to the vanity of the peacock,--seek no other object but the
furtherance of their own designs, which are always petty even when not
absolutely mean. There are obese women whose existence is a doze
between dinner and tea. There are women with thin lips and pointed
noses, who only live to squabble over domestic grievances and interfere
in their neighbours' business. There are your murderous women with
large almond eyes, fair white hands, and voluptuous red lips, who,
deprived of the dagger or the poison-bowl, will slay a reputation in a
few lazily enunciated words, delivered with a perfectly high-bred
accent. There are the miserly woman, who look after cheese-parings and
candle-ends, and lock up the soap. There are the spiteful women whose
very breath is acidity and venom. There are the frivolous women whose
chitter-chatter and senseless giggle are as empty as the rattling of
dry peas on a drum. In fact, the delicacy of women is extremely
overrated--their coarseness is never done full justice to. I have heard
them recite in public selections of a kind that no man would dare to
undertake--such as Tennyson's 'Rizpah,' for instance. I know a woman
who utters every line of it, with all its questionable allusions,
boldly before any and everybody, without so much as an attempt at
blushing. I assure you men are far more delicate than women--far more
chivalrous--far larger in their views, and more generous in their
sentiments. But I will not deny the existence of about four women in
every two hundred and fifty, who may be, and possibly are, examples of
what the female sex was originally intended to be--pure-hearted,
self-denying, gentle and truthful--filled with tenderness and
inspiration. Heaven knows my own mother was all this and more! And my
sister is--. But let me speak to you of yourself. You love music, I
understand--you are a professional artist?"

"I was," I answered, "till my state of health stopped me from working."

Heliobas bent his eyes upon me in fri