do not consider your female friends' opinions worth listening to,
for you certainly display an astonishing thirst for information when
male politicians are present. I have seen a pretty young woman, hardly
in her twenties, sitting a whole evening drinking in the doubtful wisdom
of an elderly political star, with every appearance of eager interest.
He was a bimetallic star, and was giving her whole pamphletsful of
information."

"She wanted to make up to him for some reason," said Irais, "and got him
to explain his hobby to her, and he was silly enough to be taken in. Now
which was the sillier in that case?"

She threw herself back in her chair and looked up defiantly, beating her
foot impatiently on the carpet.

"She wanted to be thought clever," said the Man of Wrath. "What puzzled
me," he went on musingly, "was that she went away apparently as serene
and happy as when she came. The explanation of the principles of
bimetallism produce, as a rule, a contrary effect."

"Why, she hadn't been listening," cried Irais, "and your simple star had
been making a fine goose of himself the whole evening.

"Prattle, prattle, simple star,
Bimetallic, wunderbar.
Though you're given to describe
Woman as a dummes Weib.
You yourself are sillier far,
Prattling, bimetallic star!"

"No doubt she had understood very little," said the Man of Wrath, taking
no notice of this effusion.

"And no doubt the gentleman hadn't understood much either." Irais was
plainly irritated.

"Your opinion of woman," said Minora in a very small voice, "is not
a high one. But, in the sick chamber, I suppose you agree that no one
could take her place?"

"If you are thinking of hospital-nurses," I said, "I must tell you that
I believe he married chiefly that he might have a wife instead of a
strange woman to nurse him when he is sick."

"But," said Minora, bewildered at the way her illusions were being
knocked about, "the sick-room is surely the very place of all others in
which a woman's gentleness and tact are most valuable."

"Gentleness and tact?" repeated the Man of Wrath. "I have never met
those qualities in the professional nurse. According to my experience,
she is a disagreeable person who finds in private nursing exquisite
opportunities for asserting her superiority over ordinary and prostrate
mankind. I know of no more humiliating position for a man than to be
in bed