probably be described as chivalrous. Those of us who rub shoulders day after day with the ordinary man are perfectly well aware that the ordinary man (however much and however kindly he may seek to conceal the fact from us) regards us as his inferiors in mental capacity; and that hence he feels a peculiar and not unnatural soreness at having his errors and failings either exposed to us or exposed by us. To be shown up before your inferior brings with it, to most people, a sense of degradation; to be shown up by your inferior makes the sense of degradation yet more keenly unpleasant.
Most women who have had to pit their brain against the brain of the ordinary man have learned to realize—sometimes with amusement, sometimes, perhaps, with a measure of exultation—that the ordinary man's very belief in their essential inferiority has placed In their hands a weapon whose edge is Infinitely keener than any that he possesses to use against them. It is just because she is regarded as his inferior that it is In the power of a woman to humiliate a man by the simple process of getting the better of him or holding his weaknesses up to contempt.
