“And what do you think of her?” asked Mrs. Farquharson confidentially. “I dare say it's an odd question, but if you will come and see us again, you will find we are given to saying odd things.”
“Like Miss Davenant?”
“You have found that out already? Well, come, what do you think of her?”
“Honestly, or conventionally?”
“If I meant conventionally, I should not ask you the question.”
Kent waited for a moment, stroking his beard. He was scarcely prepared with an answer even to satisfy himself.
“I don't know. She is a bit too complicated to be defined in a phrase like a term in Euclid. She is nearer to a man than any woman I know.”
Mrs. Farquharson smiled inwardly, noting the phrase, yet liking him for it. It was so deliciously wrong, so absurdly off the track. She contemplated him from the empyrean of feminine wisdom, and from that moment took him under her protection. To blunder honestly in things feminine is one of the ways to a woman's pity, thence often to her heart. She encouraged him, however, instead of correcting him.
“Why do you say that?”
“For one reason, because I can talk to her as I would to a man. She has ideas and is not afraid of expressing them. In fact, she is different from the ordinary women one meets.”