"That she is a butterfly!" I thundered back.
"She is not!" he shouted.
"She is!" I said.
"You, you, you imbecile!" spluttered my poor friend. "I tell you once and for all that is only one phase of her. I don't like it, I admit," (he began to cool off), "but still it is only a phase. She is in reality a woman of great depth of character." (He was quite cool by this.) "I had a conversation with her the other night that astonished me. Of course, I have always known that she is an educated woman, but the extent of her knowledge had previously escaped me. She has a much more than superficial acquaintance with the modern forms of speculative philosophy. She has read Kant and Spencer and Nietzsche with understanding: and she is now engaged in the study of Egyptian history. You have interested her deeply in the subject."
I shrugged my shoulders. "And from all this you conclude?"
"That I have been an idiot not to recognise long ago that she is my intellectual equal. And I have treated her as if she were an irresponsible child."
"But she is a woman."
"Quite so," replied this converted woman-hater, "and because she is a woman, and such a woman, she has the power to bless the man fortunate enough to win her—her affection—as few men are blessed. Now you can appreciate my position. I have blindly sacrificed my chance. I——"
"Pish!" I interrupted. "Tell her what you have told me and be blessed! You'll repent it all your life through."