"Oh, I am not talking or thinking of myself. I'm just--a woman. So
are you--a woman--and something more, perhaps--something not like
the rest of us." Here her kind eyes regarded me a trifle wistfully."
I can't quite make you out sometimes,--I wish I could! But--apart
from you and me--look at a few of these men! One has just passed our
window who has the exact physiognomy of a hawk,--cruel eyes and
sharp nose like a voracious beak. Another I noticed a minute ago
with a perfectly pig-like face,--he does not look rightly placed on
two legs, his natural attitude is on four legs, grunting with his
snout in the gutter!"

I laughed.

"You are a severe critic, Francesca!"

"Not I. I'm not criticising at all. But I can't help seeing
resemblances. And sometimes they are quite appalling. Now you, for
instance,"--here she laid a hand tentatively on mine--"you, in your
mysterious ideas of religion, actually believe that persons who lead
evil lives and encourage evil thoughts, descend the scale from which
they have risen and go back to the lowest forms of life--"

"I do believe that certainly"--I answered--"But--"

"'But me no buts,'"--she interrupted--"I tell you there are people
in this world whom I see IN THE VERY ACT OF DESCENDING! And it makes
me grow cold!"

I could well understand her feeling. I had experienced it often.
Nothing has ever filled me with a more hopeless sense of inadequacy