'Or conversely,' said Prunesquallor, 'what haven't they got that you already have?'

       'I don't follow you,' Alfred. I said I don't follow you.'

       'That's just what you do do,' said her brother, reaching out his arms and fluttering his fingers. 'And I wish you'd stop it.'

       'But my deportment, Alfred. Haven't you noticed it? What's wrong with your sex - can't they see I 'move' well?'

       'Perhaps we're too spiritual,' said Doctor Prunesquallor.

       'But my carriage! Alfred, my carriage!'

       'Too powerful, sweet white-of-egg, far too powerful; you lurch from side to side of life's drear highway: those hips of yours rotating as you go. Oh, no, my dear one, your carriage scares them off, that's what it does. You terrify them, Irma.'

       This was too much for her.

       'You've never 'believed' in me!' she cried, rising from the table, and a dreadful blush suffusing her perfect skin. 'But I can tell you' - her voice rose to a shrill scream - ''that I'm a lady'! What do you think I want with 'men'? The beasts! I hate them. Blind, stupid, clumsy, horrible, heavy, vulgar things they are. And you're 'one' of them!' she screamed, pointing at her brother, who, with his eyebrows raised a little, was continuing with his drawing of the ostrich from where he had left off. 'And 'you' are one of them! Do you hear me, Alfred, one of 'them'!'

       The pitch of her voice had brought a servant to the door. Unwisely, he had opened it, ostensibly to ask whether she had rung for him, but in reality to see what was going on.

       Irma's throat was quivering like a bowstring.

       'What have ladies to do with men?' she screamed; and then, catching sight of the face of the servant at the door, she plucked a knife from the table and flung it at the face. But her aim was not all it might have been, possibly because she was so involved in being a lady, and the knife impaled itself on the ceiling immediately above her own head, where it gave a perfect imitation of the shuddering of her throat.