'What for?'
'My dear young lady, have you been living again on vegetables lately?'
'Why?'
'Your words sound as though your thoughts were watery.'
A nettled silence fell upon me, and while I was arranging how best to convince him of their substance he was shaking his head and saying that it was strange how the most intelligent women are unable really to think. 'Water,' he continued, 'is indispensable in its proper place and good in many others where, strictly, it might be done without. I have nothing to say against watery emotions, watery sentiments, even watery affections, especially in ladies, who would be less charming in proportion as they were more rigid. Ebb and flow, uncertainty, instability, unaccountableness, are becoming to your sex. But in the region of thought, of the intellect, of pure reason, everything should be very dry. The one place, my dear young lady, in which I will endure no water is on the brain.'
I had no answer ready. There seemed to be nothing left to do but to go home. I did go a few steps up the orchard, reflecting on the way men have of telling you you cannot think, or are not logical, at the very moment when you appear to yourself to be most unanswerable—a regrettable habit that at once puts a stop to interesting conversation,—and presently, as I was nearing our fence, he called after me. 'Fräulein Rose-Marie,' he called pleasantly.
'Well?' said I, looking down at him over a displeased shoulder.
'Come back.'
'No.'
'Come back and dine with us.'