You do trust me so absolutely, you are so strangely over-kind to me, it is shameful I should vex you by fretting because you are forced to do what you might well have done at your own pleasure." "My own, I was more than vexed; chiefly perhaps for your sake, but not by you.

Where any other woman would have stung the sore by sending fresh sparks along the wire, you thought only to spare me the pain of seeing you pained.

But what do the last words mean?
No"-- for I saw the colour deepen on her half-averted face--"better leave unread what we know to be written in error." But the less agreeable a supposed duty, the more resolute was Eveena to fulfil it.
"They were meant to recall a saying familiar in every school and household," she said:-- "'Sandal loosed and well-clasped zone-- Childhood spares the woman grown.
Change the clasps, and woman yet Pays with interest childhood's debt.'" "This"-- tightening and relaxing the clasp of her zone--"is the symbol of stricter or more indulgent household rule." Then bending so as to avert her face, she unclasped her embroidered sandal and gave it into my hand;--"and this is what, I suppose, you would call its sanction." "There is more to be said for the sandal than I supposed, bambina, if it have helped to make you what you are.

But you may tell Zulve that its work and hers are done." Kneeling before her, I kissed, with more studied reverence than the sacred stone of the Caaba, the tiny foot on which I replaced its covering.
"Baby as she thinks and I call you, Eveena, you are fast unteaching me the lesson which, before you were born and ever since, the women of the Earth have done their utmost to impress indelibly upon my mind--the lesson that woman is but a less lovable, more petulant, more deeply and incurably spoilt child.

Your mother's reproach is an exact inversion of the truth.