If she make test of many admirers, she is described as a flirt; if, conscientious and demure, she await her fate, a desirable fate is by no means assured.

In truth it seems that too often a girl must dissemble—hateful as dissemblance in men.  T’is a hard road indeed that a girl has to travel.  To win her a fellow-farer for life, she must go out of her way to accommodate so many travelers: and this one is lured by this, and that one by that, and another by something unnoticed by the throng.  But, an she dissembles one iota too much, her fellow-farers look askance, and he who eventually joins her for good upbraids her for that by which she won.

 

Dissemblance is indeed at once the boon and the bane of a girl: without

it, she thinks to be overlooked (often enough a preposterous assumption);

with it, she is looked upon too much.  And always,

Always a girl has to pretend that never did she descend to dissemblance.

·        Which, nevertheless, is sometimes absolutely true, for

 

Just now and then there happens that miracle of miracles, where their flames up in the man, and their flames up in the maid, in both at once, unaided and unlooked-for, that divine and supra-mundane spark which smolders lambent in every youthful breast: when maid and man take mutual fire at touch of hands and look of eyes,--fire lit at that vestal altar which knows no source and burns for aye.

 

 

 

II.        On Men

 

“Duskolon esti to thremma anthropus.”

·        Plato

 

 

For man, the over-grown boy, life has commonly two, and only two, sides:

work, and play.  Happy he who has for a helpmate one who possesses the

faculty of increasing a zeal for the first and of adding a zest to the

second.  Wherein, O woman, thou mayest happily find the two-fold secret

of thy life-work.  For

Man is a greedy animal: he wants all or nothing.  And fortunately for

him,

Women tacitly extol man’s greed: they will not be shared any more than they will share.

There is something canine in the masculine nature: like a dog over a bone, it snarls at the very approach of a rival.

 

* * *

 

It is curious, but it is true, that proud man becomes prouder (and—more curious still—at the same time humbler) when weak woman gives him something—a look a smile, a locket, her hair, a kiss, herself.

 

* * *