"Oh, bother! Come now, Honor, leave off that ice water business, and give a fellow a word of welcome after being out in the cold. Put away that bundle of thread you're fooling with there this half-hour. You have not taken your eyes from off it yet, nor spoken a decent word since I came in." "Oh, dear!" said Honor, drawing a feigned sigh, "I suppose when a child's spoiled it's spoiled, that's all, and you must humor it." "Now," folding up her work, "what have you to say worth the trouble you've given me?" "Oh nothing I could tell you would be that in your opinion. I was at a big 'shine' last night at Miss Teazle's, and feasted my eyes on all Ottawa has to show in the way of female loveliness." "And you have come to spend the gush of your emotions consequent to such a feast on me, have you?" "No, Honor, I have not. I did see deuced pretty girls, but the emotion, as you call it, vanished as I handed the last fair bundle of shawls into her carriage. While the light burns, you know, the moth hangs around it, but when the flame goes out, spent in a weary flicker, after 'braving it' for a whole night, the moth goes to roost, when he has not been singed, or otherwise personally damaged without insurance. Well, what are you thinking of now? when you cross your arms, bury your gaze in the fire and strike your slipper with such measured beat on the fender, I know you're not paying much attention to what I am saying." She drew a long breath as though no answer were required, and then in a quiet, low tone she said, "Guy, do not talk in that light way of any woman. I know what you men have long accustomed yourselves to believe--that woman was made purposely for your pleasure; 'Man for God only, _she_ for God in him,'--but, all the same that does not exact the ratification of Heaven. If my sisters of Ottawa society, with whom you one moment amuse yourself, and the next amuse your listeners with a recital of their follies, are weak enough to seek to gratify you and your kind, 'tis not that such a weakness is a natural inheritance, for every woman who realizes her true worth, knows what a grand mission is before her, and consequently crushes such an absurd theory as fashionable women are brought up to believe from their infancy. Perhaps I am too sensitive on this point, if such a thing could be, but it is the awful wrong which is being done to our sex that fires my indignation thus. And then there are those poor deluded 'ornamental women' who sanction that outrage on their own dignity by sitting with folded hands, taking in all the nonsense which is dealt out to them when they should gather up their skirts and shrink away from you as their inveterate enemies. False faces lead them astray, but there are others who see behind them."