An odd affair is Society. At its outposts are flaming swords for women,
though invisible to other eyes; men can venture without the lines, if
they only return at roll-call. Let a woman receive or visit one of the
_demi-monde_, (the technical use of the word is happily inapplicable
here,) and she might as well earn her living by her own labor, or do
any other disreputable thing; but her brother may pay court to the most
doubtful, and mothers will only shake their heads and say, "He _must_
sow his wild oats; he'll get over all that by-and-by."
So the beauty was still queen in her circle, and found admirers in
plenty. Perhaps she even enjoyed the freedom; for, to a woman of spirit,
the constraints of _taboo_ must be irksome at times. Not the Brahmin,
who fears to tread upon sole-leather from the sacred cow, and dares
not even think of the flavor of her forbidden beef, who keeps himself
haughtily aloof from the soldier and the trader, and walks sunward from
the pariah, lest the polluting shadow fall on his holy person, has a
more difficult and engrossing occupation than the woman of fashion, in
a country where the distinctions of rank are so purely factitious as in
ours.
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