Thus while condescending to fascinate men, while deliberately seeking attention these young women still hold themselves in hand. Intending to exploit life to the uttermost they find love amusing, but they fight always against its being a vocation.
There is calculation and dangerous hardiness in their attitude to their lovers.
Their transitory love affairs are, indeed, regarded in very much the same way as formerly they were regarded by the average young men—as enjoyable and thrilling incidents of which they are ashamed only when they are talked about and blamed.
With no sex conscience, these wantons of excitement have no consciousness of womanly responsibility. Each new affair affords an eagerly snatched tribute to a colossal and restless vanity.
This is one type of woman who to-day plays with love.
There are as well other girls of a different character, less concerned with pleasure, less consciously vain, more emotional, and to men more interesting. They are incessantly thinking of their own personalities; and, for this reason, they are equally, even if not more, harmfully destructive in the utter misery they often create.
These are the girls who are always emotion hunting.
Impossible to tell what are their pseudo-feelings. A sort of sterile passion, which expends itself in their failure to know, and find, what they want.
They do not wish consciously to escape the responsibilities of marriage; indeed they seek unceasingly the perfect man to whom they may surrender their freedom. But they suffer from a formless discontent that rots into every love and prevents them finding satisfaction.
Consumed with haggard restlessness, such girls pass their days in a dangerous state of expectancy and nervous tiredness. Eternally they are unsatisfied without knowing why.