CHAPTER XII.
Lady Claudia is Vexed with Mankind.
Of course she knew who it was, and her uninviting tone was a result of her knowledge.

We are yet awaiting a systematic treatise on the psychology of women; perhaps they will some day be trained highly enough to analyze themselves.

Until this happens, we must wait; for no man unites the experience and the temperament necessary.

This could be proved, if proof were required; but, happily, proof of assertions is not always required, and proof of this one would lead us into a long digression, bristling with disputable matter, and requiring perhaps hardly less rare qualities than the task of writing the treatise itself.
The modest scribe is reduced to telling how Claudia behaved, without pretending to tell why she behaved so, far less attempting to group her under a general law.

He is comforted in thus taking a lower place by the thought that after all nobody likes being grouped under general laws--it is more interesting to be peculiar--and that Claudia would have regarded such an attempt with keen indignation; and by the further thought that if you once start on general laws, there's no telling where you will stop.