he afterwards complained to Lady
Winsleigh. "They _tried_ to be as rude to each other as they could!"

Lady Winsleigh laughed. "Of course!" she said. "What else _did_ you
expect! But if you want some fun, ask a young, pretty, and brilliant
authoress (there are a few such) to meet an old, ugly and dowdy one (and
there are many such), and watch the dowdy one's face! It will be a
delicious study of expression, I assure you!"

But Thelma would not try this delicate experiment,--in fact, she began
rather to avoid literary people, with the exception of Beau Lovelace.
His was a genial, sympathetic nature, and, moreover, he had a winning
charm of manner which few could resist. He was not a bookworm,--he was
not, strictly speaking, a literary man,--and he was entirely indifferent
to public praise or blame. He was, as he himself expressed it, "a
servant and worshipper of literature," and there is a wide gulf of
difference between one who serves literature for its own sake and one
who uses it basely as a tool to serve himself.

But in all her new and varied experiences, perhaps Thelma was most
completely bewildered by the women she met. Her simple Norse beliefs in
the purity and gentleness of womanhood were startled and outraged,--she
could not understand London ladies at all. Some of them seemed to have
no idea beyond dress and show,--others looked upon their husbands, the
lawful protectors of their name and fame, with easy indifference, as
though they were mere bits of household furniture,--others, having
nothing better to do, "went in" for spiritualism,--the low spiritualism
that manifests itself in the turning of tables and moving of
side-boards--not the higher spiritualism of an improved, perfected, and
saint-like way of life--and these argued wildly on the theory of matter
passing through matter, to the extent of declaring themselves able to
send a letter or box through the wall without making a hole in it,--and
this with such obstinate gravity as made Thelma fear for their reason.
Then there were the women-atheists,--creatures who had voluntarily
crushed all the sweetness of the sex within them--foolish human flowers
without fragrance, that persistently turned away their faces from the
sunlight and denied its existence, preferring to wither, profitless, on
the dry stalk of their own theory;--there were the "platform-women,"
unnatural products of an unnatural age,--there were the great ladies of
the aristocracy who turned