“No. I draw no decorative distinction between the sexes, my darling,” she replied in the same even tone of slightly patient commonplace. By now, however, something strange in the terms of her earlier answer had passed the resistance necessarily strong in any human mind to such strangeness, and had in part entered Carfax’s consciousness. “You talk the most sweet nonsense, dearest Ariel,” he said. “And nonsense with a lovely strangeness about it. Lovely nonsense.”
