ar a few
hours' discomfort for it and for you. And yet," she went on
passionately, "I may sit trembling and heart-sick for a whole day
alone that you may carry out your purpose. I may receive the only real
sting your lips have given, because I could not bear that pain without
crying. And so with everything. It is not that I must not suffer pain,
but that the pain must not come from without. Your lips would punish a
fault with words that shame and sting for a day, a summer, a year;
your hand must never inflict a sting that may smart for ten minutes.
And it is not only that you do this, but you pride yourself on it.
Why? It is not that you think the pain of the body so much worse than
that of the spirit:--you that smiled at me when you were too badly
bruised and torn to stand, yet could scarcely keep back your tears
just now, when you thought that I had suffered half an hour of sorrow
I did not quite deserve. Why then? Do you think that women feel so
differently? Have the women of your Earth hearts so much harder and
skins so much softer than ours?"

She spoke with most unusual impetuosity, and with that absolute
simplicity and sincerity which marked her every look and word, which
gave them, for me at least, an unspeakable charm, and for all who
heard her a characteristic individuality unlike the speech or manner
of any other woman. As soon suspect an infant of elaborate sarcasm as
Eveena of affectation, irony, or conscious paradox. Nay, while her
voice was in my ears, I never could feel that her views _were_
paradoxical. The direct straightforwardness and simple structure of
the Martial language enhanced this peculiar effect of her speech; and
much that seems infantine in translation was all but eloquent as she
spoke it. Often, as on this occasion, I felt guilty of insincerity, of
a verbal fencing unworthy of her unalloyed good faith and earnestness,
as I endeavoured to parry thrusts that went to the very heart of all
those instinctive doctrines which I could the less defend on the
moment, because I had never before dreamed that they could be doubted.

"At any rate," I said at last, "your sex gain by my heresy, since they
are as richly gifted in stinging words as we in physical force."

"So much the worse for them, surely," she answered simply, "if it be
right that men should rule and women obey?"

"That is the received doctrine on Earth," I answered. "In practice,
men command and women disobey them; men bully and wo