"What other things?" She was studying every line of his young, repugnant face, and Durant was a little embarrassed by her steady gaze. "Other interests, other feelings--whatever it is that women do care for most." "I don't know anything about women." Her remark might have borne various interpretations, either that she knew nothing about herself, that she despised her own sex too much to include herself in it, or that she had tacitly adopted Durant's attitude, which seemed to leave her altogether outside of the discussion. He talked to her unconsciously, without any desire to please, as if he assumed that she expected as little from him as he from her. She never reminded him that she was a woman. It would have been absurd if she had insisted on it, and whatever she was Miss Tancred was not absurd. She went on calmly, "So I can't say what they care for most; can you?" "You know my opinion. I wanted yours." "Mine isn't worth much. But I should say that in these things no two women were alike. You talk as if they were all made of the same stuff." "So they are inside--in their souls, I mean." "There's more unlikeness in their souls, I imagine, than there ever is in their bodies; and you wouldn't say an ugly woman was quite the same as a pretty one, would you?" "Yes; in the obvious sense that they are both women. I admit that there may be an ugliness that cancels sex, to say nothing of a beauty that transcends it; but in either case the woman is unique." "And if the woman, why not her soul?" "Because--because--because there is a certain psychical quality that is eternal and unchangeable; because the soul is the seat of the cosmic difference we call sex. In man or woman that is the one unalterable fact--the last reality." He spoke coldly, brutally almost, as if he, like herself, was blind to the pathos of her ignored and rejected womanhood. She seemed to be thinking that last point over. "Yes," she said, "I'm glad you came. I believe you can help me." "I shall be delighted if I can." "What do you think of Mrs. Fazakerly?" Durant was a little taken aback by the suddenness of the question. "What should I think?" "I--I hardly know." She knitted her black brows till they almost touched, and propped her chin with her hand, as if she were oppressed with the weight of her own thoughts. It struck him that her provincial mind entertained an unreasonable suspicion of the consummate little widow, a woman's jealousy of the superior creature compact of sex; and a sense of justice made him inclined to defend Mrs. Fazakerly. Besides, he liked Mrs. Fazakerly; she, at any rate, was not a bore. "She's a very amusing woman, and I should say she was an uncommonly good sort, too." To his surprise her face brightened. "Should you? Should you say that she had a good heart?" "Really, Miss Tancred, I can't see into Mrs. Fazakerly's heart, but I wouldn't mind betting----" "That she's good? And affectionate? And straight?" "Straight as a die."