but even if I did not know her
I should recognise her as French. You see that she is conscious all the
time that she is a woman and therefore that men's eyes are on her. She
does not escape from that consciousness. If a German lady were to pass
us we should see that she also is sex conscious; but she would be
aware that she is _only_ a woman, the inferior of the men with her. The
Englishwoman does not admit, does not feel, that she has any superiors
and she can walk as if she did not care whether people looked at her and
admired her or not. Even the American woman cannot or does not do that.
She wants to please and is always trying to please. The Englishwoman is
not indifferent to admiration and she tries to please if she thinks it
worth while. But she has learnt to bear herself as if she does not care;
as if the world and all that is in it were hers of right."

Two men--one of them almost forty years of age, the other much
younger--walked slowly up the hall looking to right and left of them.
They failed to find the friends whom they sought. The elder spoke a few
words and they sat down opposite to us, probably to wait until the rest
of their party should arrive. "The men of your English upper classes,"
said Ascher, "are physically very splendid, the sons of the women we
have been looking at are sure to be that. They possess a curious code of
honour, very limited, very irrational, but certainly very fine as far as
it goes. And I think they are probably true to it."

"I should have said," I replied, "that the idea of honour had almost
disappeared, what used to be called the honour of a gentleman."

"You do not really think that," said Ascher. "Or perhaps you may. In a
certain sense honour has disappeared among your upper classes. It is
no longer displayed. To the outsider it is scarcely noticeable. It is
covered up by affectation of cynicism, of greed, of selfishness. To pose
as cynical and selfish is for the moment fashionable. But the sense of
honour--of that singular arbitrary English honour--is behind the
pose, is the reality. Look at those two men opposite us. They are
probably--but perhaps I offend you in talking this way. You yourself
belong to the same class as those men."

"You do not offend me in the least," I said. "I'm not an Englishman for
one thing. Gorman won't let me call myself Irish, but I stick to it that
I'm not English. Please go on with what you were saying."

"Those men," said Ascher slowly, "a