"It must have been awful--awful, as you say.

It is impossible for us really to imagine quite what it was, or to picture up such scenes as you must have witnessed.

I can understand that all this must seem frivolous and contemptible to you." "No, I don't go so far as that," he smiled.

"It is good that there should be butterflies as well as bees; and, at any rate, the women of India, who had the reputation of being as frivolous and pleasure-loving as the rest of their sex, came out nobly and showed a degree of patience under suffering and of heroic courage unsurpassable in history.
"I am afraid," he said, as the hostess gave the signal for the ladies to rise, "you will long look back upon this dinner as one of unprecedented dullness." "Not dullness," she smiled.

"Exceptional certainly, but as something so different from the usual thing, when one talks of nothing but the opera, the theatres and exhibitions, as to deserve to be put down in one's diary by a mark.