"But I was thinking then, and I may tell you now, that you remind me not of the women of my own Earth, but of petted children suddenly transferred to a harsh school.

You speak and look like such a child, as if you expected each moment at least to be severely scolded, if not beaten, without knowing your fault." "Not yet," she murmured, with a smile which seemed to me more painful than tears would have been.

"But please don't speak as if I should fear anything so much as being scolded by you.

We have a saying that 'the hand may bruise the skin, the tongue can break the heart.'" "True enough," I said; "only on Earth it is mostly woman's tongue that breaks the heart, and men must not in return bruise the skin." "Why not ?" she asked.

"You said to my mother the other day that Arga (the fretful child of Esmo's adoption) deserved to be beaten." "Women are supposed," I answered, "to be amenable to milder influences; and a man must be drunk or utterly brutal before he could deal harshly with a creature so gentle and so fragile as yourself." "Don't spoil me," she said, with a pretty half-mournful, half-playful glance.