"These broken legs brought me very much nearer to my goal; and when finally I apprised her that I had hopelessly spoilt my digestion at the wedding meal of the Duke of D'Ontexist, she implored me not to trifle any longer with her feelings. I stopped trifling. "This experience," Alcibiades continued, "did much to enlighten me about what was behind all that forbidding exterior of the middle-class woman. I discovered Eve in the Mediæval form of womanhood. I was reminded of the Spartan women who, at the first meeting, seemed so proud, unapproachable and Amazonian; at the second meeting they had lost some of their prohibitive temper; and at the third meeting they proved to be women, and nothing but women after all. "Honestly, I preferred the English middle-class woman in her first stage. It suited the somewhat rigid style of her beauty much better. In the last or sentimental stage she was much less interesting. Her tenderness was flabby or childish. Then she cried after every _rendez-vous_. That annoyed me considerably. One evening I could not help asking her whether she did not feel like sending five pounds of conscience-money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She drew the line on that, and cried more profusely. Whereupon I proposed to send fifty pounds of conscience-money and to be released of any further tears. This seemed to pacify and to console her; and thus we parted. * * * * * "A few days after I had been relieved of my first lady friend in England," Alcibiades continued, "I made the acquaintance of a girl whose age I was unable to determine. She said she was twenty-nine years old. However, I soon found that all unmarried girls _d'un certain âge_ in England are exactly twenty-nine years old. "She was not without certain attractions. She had read much, spoke fluently, had beautiful auburn hair and white arms. In her technical terms, which she used very frequently, she was not very felicitous. She repeatedly mixed up bigotry with bigamy, or with trigonometry. My presence did not seem to affect her very much, and after two or three calls I discovered that she was in a chronic state of rebellion against society and law at large.