looked her full in the face. Need I say more?

True, immediately after doing so I left the room with what may
possibly have appeared to be precipitation and without waiting for any
refreshment. But that was because I had changed my mind, not because I
was frightened, you understand.

One consolation that shy folk can take unto themselves is that shyness
is certainly no sign of stupidity. It is easy enough for bull-headed
clowns to sneer at nerves, but the highest natures are not necessarily
those containing the greatest amount of moral brass. The horse is not an
inferior animal to the cock-sparrow, nor the deer of the forest to the
pig. Shyness simply means extreme sensibility, and has nothing whatever
to do with self-consciousness or with conceit, though its relationship
to both is continually insisted upon by the poll-parrot school of
philosophy.

Conceit, indeed, is the quickest cure for it. When it once begins to
dawn upon you that you are a good deal cleverer than any one else in
this world, bashfulness becomes shocked and leaves you. When you can
look round a roomful of people and think that each one is a mere child
in intellect compared with yourself you feel no more shy of them than
you would of a select company of magpies or orang-outangs.

Conceit is the finest armor that a man can wear. Upon its smooth,
impenetrable surface the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glance
harmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate the sword of talent cannot
force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to be borne as
well as dealt. I do not, of course, speak of the conceit that displays
itself in an elevated nose and a falsetto voice. That is not real
conceit--that is only playing at being conceited; like children play
at being kings and queens and go strutting about with feathers and
long trains. Genuine conceit does not make a man objectionable. On the
contrary, it tends to make him genial, kind-hearted, and simple. He
has no need of affectation--he is far too well satisfied with his own
character; and his pride is too deep-seated to appear at all on
the outside. Careless alike of praise or blame, he can afford to be
truthful. Too far, in fancy, above the rest of mankind to trouble
about their petty distinctions, he is equally at home with duke or
costermonger. And valuing no one's standard but his own, he is never
tempted to practice that miserable pretense that less self-reliant
people offer up as an hourl