because I hope she will prove in every respect a pleasant companion
for you."

"Thank you; but, unfortunately, that is one luxury of which I never
felt the need, and with which, permit me to tell you, I can readily
dispense. I have little respect for women, and no desire to be wearied
with their inane garrulity."

She leaned back in her chair, and tapped restlessly with the end of
the pen-staff on the morocco-covered table.

Dr. Grey looked down steadily and gravely into her provokingly defiant
face, and replied very coldly,--

"Were I in your place, I think I should jealously guard my lips from
the hasty utterance of sentiments that, if unfeigned, ought to bring a
blush to every true woman's cheek; for I fear that she who has no
respect for her own sex bids fair to disgrace it."

A scarlet wave rolled up from throat to temples, and the lurking
yellow gleamed in her eyes, but the bend of her nostril and curve of
her lips did not relax.

"Which is preferable, hypocrisy or irreverence?"

"Both are unpardonable, in a woman."

"Where is your vast charity, Dr. Grey?"

"Busy in sheltering that lofty ideal of genuine female perfection
which you seem so pertinaciously ambitious to sully and degrade."

"You are harsh, and scarcely courteous."

"You will never find me less so when you vauntingly exhibit such
mournful blemishes of character."

"At least, sir, I am honest, and show myself just what God saw fit to
allow misfortune to make me."

"Hush, Salome! Do not add impiousness to the long catalogue of your
sinful follies. I hoped that there was a favorable change in you
before I left home, but I very much fear that, instead of exorcising
the one evil spirit that possessed you, you have swept, and garnished,
and settled yourself comfortably with seven new ones."

"And, like R. Chaim Vital, you come to pronounce _Nidui!_ and banish
my diabolical guests. If cauterization cures moral ulcers as
effectually as those that afflict the flesh, then, verily, you intend
I shall be clean and whole. You are losing patience with your
graceless neophyte."

"Yes, Salome; because forced to lose faith in her inclination and
capacity to sublimate her erring nature. Once for all, let me say that
habitual depreciation of your own sex will not elevate you in the
estimation of mine; for, however fallen you may find mankind, they
nevertheless realize amid their degradation that,--

''Tis somewhat to have known, albeit in vain,