“Do let me teach you. Won’t you try, Herr Sage?”
She went up to him and dropped him a little curtesy. It is thus she always addresses him, entirely oblivious to the fact, so patent to every one else, that he resents it.
“Oh come, put away that tiresome old book,” she went on gaily, as he did not move; “I am certain it is only some dry agricultural work that you just nod over. Dancing is much better for you.” Irais and I looked at one another quite frightened. I am sure we both turned pale when the unhappy girl actually laid hold forcibly of his book, and, with a playful little shriek, ran away with it into the next room, hugging it to her bosom and looking back roguishly over her shoulder at him as she ran. There was an awful pause. We hardly dared raise our eyes. Then the Man of Wrath got up slowly, knocked the ashes off the end of his cigar, looked at his watch, and went out at the opposite door into his own rooms, where he stayed for the rest of the evening. She has never, I must say, been skittish since.
“I hope you are listening, Miss Minora,” said Irais, “because this sort of conversation is likely to do you good.”
“I always listen when people talk sensibly,” replied Minora, stirring her grog.
Irais glanced at her with slightly doubtful eyebrows. “Do you agree with our hostess’s description of women?” she asked after a pause.
“As nobodies? No, of course I do not.”
“Yet she is right. In the eye of the law we are literally nobodies in our country. Did you know that women are forbidden to go to political meetings here?”
“Really?” Out came the note-book.
“The law expressly forbids the attendance at such meetings of women, children, and idiots.”