This wondrous world did the philosopher open to the ready and quick-witted girl; nor did he ever lead her to believe that it was at all an unusual or an extraordinary thing for a girl to be so quick and apt for science as herself, nor did he tell her that if she went to Newnham or to Girton, extraordinary glories would await her, with the acclamations of the multitude in the Senate House and the praise of the Moderators.

Iris, therefore, was not proud of her mathematics, which seemed part of her very nature.

But of her heraldry she was, I fear, extremely proud--proud even to sinfulness.

No doubt this was the reason why, through her heraldry, the humiliation of this evening fell upon her.
"If he is young," she thought, "if he is young--and he is sure to be young--he will be very angry at having opened his mind to a girl"-- it will be perceived that, although she knew so much mathematics, she was really very ignorant of the opposite sex, not to know that a young man likes nothing so much as the opening of his mind to a young lady.

"If he is old, he will be more humiliated still"-- as if any man at any age was ever humiliated by confessing himself to a woman.