"The man who shows all that is in him to a woman is not a clever man."
"But clever men often do that, without knowing they are doing it."
"You are thinking of your Englishmen," he said, but apparently without sarcasm.
She remembered their first conversation alone.
"The fine fellers—the rulers!" she said.
He did not answer her smile.
"Your Englishmen show what they are. They do not care to hide anything. If any one does not like all they are, so much the worse for him. Let him have a kick and no piastre. And to the women they are the same—no! that is not true."
He checked himself.
"No; to the men they are men who are ready to kick, but to the women they are boys. A woman takes a boy by the ear"—he put his left hand over his head and took hold of his right ear by the top—"so, and leads him where she pleases. So the woman leads the Englishman. But we are not like that."
She gazed at the brown hand that held the ear. How unnatural that action had seemed to her! Yet to him it was perfectly natural. Surely in everything he was the opposite of all that she was accustomed to. He took his hand away from his ear.