"Few women do, if they have any."

"Is any woman without them?"

"Yes, one."

"Name her."

"The absolutely good woman."

For a moment he was silent, struck to silence by the fierceness of her
cynicism, a fierceness which had leapt suddenly out of her as a drawn
sword leaps from its sheath.

"I don't acknowledge that, Mrs. Chepstow," he said--and at this moment
perhaps he was the man talking to himself in the dark, as Nigel often
was.

"Of course not. No man would."

"Why not?"

"Men seldom name, even to themselves, the weapons by which they are
conquered. But women know what those weapons are."

"The Madame Marneffes, but not the Baroness Hulots."

"A Baroness Hulot never counts."