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.
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