"I have never been able to make out," I began, "why women are so shy about being caught reading poetry. We men--lawyers, mechanics, or what not--may well feel ashamed. If we must read poetry, it should be at dead of night, within closed doors. But you women are so akin to poesy. The Creator Himself is a lyric poet, and Jayadeva [15] must have practised the divine art seated at His feet." Bee made no reply, but only blushed uncomfortably. She made as if she would leave the room. Whereupon I protested: "No, no, pray read on. I will just take a book I left here, and run away." With which I took up my book from the table. "Lucky you did not think of glancing over its pages," I continued, "or you would have wanted to chastise me." "Indeed! Why?" asked Bee. "Because it is not poetry," said I. "Only blunt things, bluntly put, without any finicking niceness. I wish Nikhil would read it." Bee frowned a little as she murmured: "What makes you wish that?" "He is a man, you see, one of us. My only quarrel with him is that he delights in a misty vision of this world. Have you not observed how this trait of his makes him look on __Swadeshi__ as if it was some poem of which the metre must be kept correct at every step? We, with the clubs of our prose, are the iconoclasts of metre." "What has your book to do with __Swadeshi__?" "You would know if you only read it. Nikhil wants to go by made- up maxims, in __Swadeshi__ as in everything else; so he knocks up against human nature at every turn, and then falls to abusing it. He never will realize that human nature was created long before phrases were, and will survive them too." Bee was silent for a while and then gravely said: "Is it not a part of human nature to try and rise superior to itself?" I smiled inwardly. "These are not your words", I thought to myself. "You have learnt them from Nikhil. You are a healthy human being. Your flesh and blood have responded to the call of reality. You are burning in every vein with life-fire--do I not know it? How long should they keep you cool with the wet towel of moral precepts?" "The weak are in the majority," I said aloud. "They are continually poisoning the ears of men by repeating these shibboleths. Nature has denied them strength--it is thus that they try to enfeeble others." "We women are weak," replied Bimala. "So I suppose we must join in the conspiracy of the weak."