At last, having written down a series of little sentences, with notes of interrogation attached to them, he observed aloud, "'Women--'under the heading Women I've written: "'Not really vainer than men.

Lack of self-confidence at the base of most serious faults.

Dislike of own sex traditional, or founded on fact?
Every woman not so much a rake at heart, as an optimist, because they don't think.' What do you say, Rachel ?" He paused with his pencil in his hand and a sheet of paper on his knee.
Rachel said nothing.

Up and up the steep spiral of a very late Beethoven sonata she climbed, like a person ascending a ruined staircase, energetically at first, then more laboriously advancing her feet with effort until she could go no higher and returned with a run to begin at the very bottom again.
"'Again, it's the fashion now to say that women are more practical and less idealistic than men, also that they have considerable organising ability but no sense of honour'-- query, what is meant by masculine term, honour ?--what corresponds to it in your sex?
Eh ?" Attacking her staircase once more, Rachel again neglected this opportunity of revealing the secrets of her sex.

She had, indeed, advanced so far in the pursuit of wisdom that she allowed these secrets to rest undisturbed; it seemed to be reserved for a later generation to discuss them philosophically.
Crashing down a final chord with her left hand, she exclaimed at last, swinging round upon him: "No, Terence, it's no good; here am I, the best musician in South America, not to speak of Europe and Asia, and I can't play a note because of you in the room interrupting me every other second." "You don't seem to realise that that's what I've been aiming at for the last half-hour," he remarked.