having his feverish brow soothed by a sprucely-dressed strange
woman, bristling with starch and spotlessness. He would give half his
income for his clothes, and probably the other half if she would leave
him alone, and go away altogether. He feels her superiority through
every pore; he never before realised how absolutely inferior he is; he
is abjectly polite, and contemptibly conciliatory; if a friend comes to
see him, he eagerly praises her in case she should be listening behind
the screen; he cannot call his soul his own, and, what is far more
intolerable, neither is he sure that his body really belongs to him; he
has read of ministering angels and the light touch of a woman's hand,
but the day on which he can ring for his servant and put on his socks in
private fills him with the same sort of wildness of joy that he felt as
a homesick schoolboy at the end of his first term."

Minora was silent. Irais's foot was livelier than ever. The Man of Wrath
stood smiling blandly down upon us. You can't argue with a person so
utterly convinced of his infallibility that he won't even get angry with
you; so we sat round and said nothing.

"If," he went on, addressing Irais, who looked rebellious, "you doubt
the truth of my remarks, and still cling to the old poetic notion of
noble, self-sacrificing women tenderly helping the patient over the
rough places on the road to death or recovery, let me beg you to try
for yourself, next time any one in your house is ill, whether the actual
fact in any way corresponds to the picturesque belief. The angel who is
to alleviate our sufferings comes in such a questionable shape, that
to the unimaginative she appears merely as an extremely self-confident
young woman, wisely concerned first of all in securing her personal
comfort, much given to complaints about her food and to helplessness
where she should be helpful, possessing an extraordinary capacity for
fancying herself slighted, or not regarded as the superior being she
knows herself to be, morbidly anxious lest the servants should, by some
mistake, treat her with offensive cordiality, pettish if the patient
gives more trouble than she had expected, intensely injured and
disagreeable if he is made so courageous by his wretchedness as to wake
her during the night--an act of desperation of which I was guilty once,
and once only. Oh, these good women! What sane man wants to have to do
with angels? And especially do we object to having them a