I paused, overcome by my own feelings. Heliobas smiled.
"So! You are stung!" he said quietly; "stung into action. That is as it should be. Resume your seat, mademoiselle, and do not be angry with me. I am studying you for your own good. In the meantime permit me to analyze your words a little. You are young and inexperienced. You speak of the 'over-sensitiveness, the fatal delicacy, the highly-strung nervousness of the feminine nature.' My dear lady, if you had lived as long as I have, you would know that these are mere stock phrases--for the most part meaningless. As a rule, women are less sensitive than men. There are many of your sex who are nothing but lumps of lymph and fatty matter--women with less instinct than the dumb beasts, and with more brutality. There are others who,-- adding the low cunning of the monkey to the vanity of the peacock,-- seek no other object but the furtherance of their own designs, which are always petty even when not absolutely mean. There are obese women whose existence is a doze between dinner and tea.
There are women with thin lips and pointed noses, who only live to squabble over domestic grievances and interfere in their neighbours' business. There are your murderous women with large almond eyes, fair white hands, and voluptuous red lips, who, deprived of the dagger or the poison-bowl, will slay a reputation in a few lazily enunciated words, delivered with a perfectly high-bred accent. There are the miserly woman, who look after cheese-parings and candle- ends, and lock up the soap. There are the spiteful women whose very breath is acidity and venom. There are the frivolous women whose chitter-chatter and senseless giggle are as empty as the rattling of dry peas on a drum. In fact, the delicacy of women is extremely overrated--their coarseness is never done full justice to. I have heard them recite in public selections of a kind that no man would dare to undertake--such as Tennyson's 'Rizpah,' for instance. I know a woman who utters every line of it, with all its questionable allusions, boldly before any and everybody, without so much as an attempt at blushing. I assure you men are far more delicate than women--far more chivalrous--far larger in their views, and more generous in their sentiments. But I will not deny the existence of about four women in every two hundred and fifty, who may be, and possibly are, examples of what the female sex was originally intended to be--pure-hearted, self-denying, gentle and truthful-- filled with tenderness and inspiration. Heaven knows my own mother was all this and more! And my sister is--. But let me speak to you of yourself. You love music, I understand--you are a professional artist?"