"Please tell me at once what it is that I possess which your womenkind do not." "If I answered all that your question implies," he said, "I should make use of speech too direct for the conventions of the world in which you live.

I would simply remind you that whereas we men in China may claim, I think, to have reached the same standard of culture and civilisation as Europeans, we have left our womenkind far behind in that respect.

The Chinese woman, even the noble lady, does not care for serious affairs.
The God of the Mountains, as they call him, made her a flower to pluck, a beautiful plaything for her chosen mate.

She remains primitive.

That is why, in time, man wearies of her, why the person of imagination looks sometimes westward, finds a new joy and a strange new fascination in a wholly different type of femininity." "But you have many European women now living in China," Maggie reminded him,--"American women, too, and they are so much admired everywhere." "The Chinese, especially we of the nobility," Prince Shan replied, "are born with racial prejudices.