What was passing in her mind, and reducing her to monosyllables, was the thought that she was a woman, and, as such, handicapped in speech with a man; while he could say all he pleased about himself, and expect her to listen to it with interest. They had been gradually becoming intimate friends, and this intimacy had ripened sensibly even during this short chat, the sequel of the separation from the Archaeological Congress, which it suited them to believe only just out of sight and hearing: quite within shot considered as _chaperons_. Their familiarity had got to such a pitch that the Hon. Percival had contrived to take her into his confidence about his own life, and she had to remain tongue-tied about hers, being a woman. How could she say to him:--"I have never had the ghost of a love-affair in the whole of my colourless, but irreproachable, life. A mystic usage of my family of four sisters, a nervous invalid mother, and an absent-minded father, determined my status in early girlhood. I was to show a respectful interest in the love-affairs of my sisters, who were handsome and pretty and charming and attractive and _piquantes_, while I was relatively plain and backward, besides having an outcrop on one cheek which has since been successfully removed. I was not to presume upon my position as a sister to express opinions about these said love-affairs, because I was not supposed to know anything about such matters. They were not in my department. My _role_ was a domestic one, and I had a high moral standpoint; which I would gladly have dispensed with, but the force of family tradition overpowered me. It has been a poor consolation to me to carry about this standpoint like a campstool to the houses of the friends I visit at intervals, now that my sisters are all married, and my mother has departed this life, and my father has married a Mrs. Dubosc, with whom I don't agree. I lead a life of constant resentment against unattached mankind, who decide, after critical inspection, that they won't, when I have really never asked them to. You and I have been more companionable--more like keeping company, as Lutwyche would say--than any man I ever came across, and I should like to be able to say to you that, even as you never met with Rosalind, even so I never met with Orlando, but without any phase of my career to correspond with the one you so delicately hinted at just now, in your own. For I fancied I read between your lines that your scheme of life had not been precisely that of an anchorite. Pray understand that I have never supposed it was so, and that I rather honour your attempt to indicate the fact to me without outraging my maidenly--old maidish, if you will--susceptibilities"?