We sometimes discover that gifted women are over-consciously aware of the effect which they produce. While we admire the iris on the peacock's neck, a bridling runs through it as if to set the colors in a better light, and our attention is divided by the motion. The orator's greatest gift is self-absorption. It strips his person to clothe his thought. His morals seem to gather luminosity out of the air, to become visible to men. The moment that the speaker listens to his own words, and snatches time between them to make the audience captive to his little private ovation, the people are less absorbed, begin to study the cut of his garments, and nod to each other how well they fit. Then the thought that was beginning to condense goes back like Ariel to the elements. When a woman's excellence reads on our faces that it is delightful, and begins also to be delighted, it throws a shadow: as we stand in it she seems less chaste than we thought her. All of Portia's talents share the inviolable reserve of her person, which seems to convey its modesty into the unspoken thought. How adorable is her humility!-- "You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, ... an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd: Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn; and happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all, in that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king." Does this language seem to you slavish and old-fashioned? And do you, madam, declare that you never saw the man yet for whom you would so demean yourself? Then I shall know that just at present you are not in love. Perhaps you never have been; for it is the perfect language of a woman's first hours which follow love's declaration, when she feels that her life and soul are to be made complete by marriage. She storms herself with questions never before suggested. What could he see in her? What has she got with which to repay this exquisite flattery, this shuddering delight at being summoned out of millions of her sex? The first impulse is to spill the soul in a libation to the deity of the hour: let the whole of it drench my lover; let me not dare to reserve a portion to teach me a first selfish lesson. All, all is yours, my king! Come, drain it at the chalice of my lips!