At that instant she did not wear a woman's aspect, but rather a man's.

Power of a particular kind strongly limned itself in all her traits, and that power was not my kind of power: neither sympathy, nor congeniality, nor submission, were the emotions it awakened.

I stood--not soothed, nor won, nor overwhelmed.

It seemed as if a challenge of strength between opposing gifts was given, and I suddenly felt all the dishonour of my diffidence--all the pusillanimity of my slackness to aspire.
"Will you," she said, "go backward or forward ?" indicating with her hand, first, the small door of communication with the dwelling-house, and then the great double portals of the classes or schoolrooms.
"En avant," I said.
"But," pursued she, cooling as I warmed, and continuing the hard look, from very antipathy to which I drew strength and determination, "can you face the classes, or are you over-excited ?" She sneered slightly in saying this: nervous excitability was not much to Madame's taste.
"I am no more excited than this stone," I said, tapping the flag with my toe: "or than you," I added, returning her look.
"Bon! But let me tell you these are not quiet, decorous, English girls you are going to encounter.

Ce sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes, franches, brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles." I said: "I know; and I know, too, that though I have studied French hard since I came here, yet I still speak it with far too much hesitation--too little accuracy to be able to command their respect I shall make blunders that will lay me open to the scorn of the most ignorant.