lady's delicate face straightened.

"You know perfectly well what I mean," she said.--"That which we all
think about so constantly, and yet affect to speak of as a joke or a
slight impropriety--love, marriage, motherhood."

"Yes, Lady Calmady is a past-master in those arts," Mr. Quayle
replied.--Again the ground was holy. He was conscious his pulse
quickened.

"The beauty of it all, as one sees it in her case, breaks one up a
little. There is no laugh left in one about those things. One sees that
to her they are of the nature of religion--a religion pure and
undefiled, a new way of knowing God and of bringing oneself into line
with the truth as it is in Him. But, having once seen that, one can
decline upon no lower level. One grows ambitious. One will have it that
way or not at all."

Honoria paused again. The bleak wind buffeted her. But she was no
longer troubled or chilled by it, rather did it brace her to greater
fearlessness of resolve and of speech.

"You are contemptuous of women," she said.

"I have betrayed characteristics of the ass, other than its patience,"
Ludovic lamented.

"Oh! I didn't mean that," Honoria returned, smiling in friendliest
fashion upon him. "Every man worth the name really feels as you do, I
imagine. I don't blame you. Possibly I am growing a trifle shaky as to
feminine superiority, and woman spelled with a capital letter, myself.
I'm awfully afraid she is safest--for herself and others--under slight
restraint, in a state of mild subjection. She's not quite to be
trusted, either intellectually or emotionally--at least, the majority
of her isn't. If she got her head, I've a dreadful suspicion she would
make a worse hash of creation generally than you men have made of it
already, and that"--Honoria's eyes narrowed, her upper lip shortened,
and her smile shone out again delightfully--"that's saying a very great
deal, you know."

"My spirits rise to giddy heights," Mr. Quayle exclaimed. "I endorse
those sentiments. But whence, oh, dear lady, this change of front?"

"Wait a minute. We've not got to the end of my contention yet."

"The Paris train is late. There is time. And this is all excellent
hearing."

"I'm not quite so sure of that," Honoria said. "For, you see, just in
proportion as I give up the fiction of her superiority, and admit that
woman already has her political, domestic, and social deserts, I feel a
chivalry towards her, poor, dear thing, which I never felt before