e shame and annoyance in the eyes of his
servants that her unexplained absence had caused him.
He emphasized his speech by gestures. He thrust out one rather large
ill-shaped hand at her with two vibrating fingers extended. His ears
became red, his nose red, his eyes seemed red and all about these points
his face was wrathful white. His hair rose up into stiff scared
listening ends. He had his rights, he had some _little_ claim to
consideration surely, he might be just nobody but he wasn't going to
stand this much anyhow. He gave her fair warning. What was she, what did
she know of the world into which she wanted to rush? He lapsed into
views of Lady Beach-Mandarin--unfavourable views. I wish Lady
Beach-Mandarin could have heard him....
Ever and again Lady Harman sought to speak. This incessant voice
confused and baffled her; she had a just attentive mind at bottom and
down there was a most weakening feeling that there must indeed be some
misdeed in her to evoke so impassioned a storm. She had a curious and
disconcerting sense of responsibility for his dancing exasperation, she
felt she was to blame for it, just as years ago she had felt she was to
blame for his tears when he had urged her so desperately to marry him.
Some irrational instinct made her want to allay him. It is the supreme
feminine weakness, that wish to allay. But she was also clinging
desperately to her resolution to proclaim her other forthcoming
engagements. Her will hung on to that as a man hangs on to a mountain
path in a thunderburst. She stood gripping her dressing-table and ever
and again trying to speak. But whenever she did so Sir Isaac lifted a
hand and cried almost threateningly: "You hear me out, Elly! You hear me
out!" and went on a little faster....
(Limburger in his curious "_Sexuelle Unterschiede der Seele_," points
out as a probably universal distinction between the sexes that when a
man scolds a woman, if only he scolds loudly enough and long enough,
conviction of sin is aroused, while in the reverse case the result is
merely a murderous impulse. This he further says is not understood by
women, who hope by scolding to produce the similar effect upon men that
they themselves would experience. The passage is illustrated by figures
of ducking stools and followed by some carefully analyzed statistics of
connubial crime in Berlin in the years 1901-2. But in this matter let
the student compare the achievement of Paulina in _The Winter's
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