“The men women will marry. The men quite fine, intelligent women marry; and idolise, my dear Miriam.”
“Many artists have to use any material that comes to hand. The treatment is the thing.”
“Treatment that mistakes putty for marble, my dear Miriam——”
“And you don’t see that you are proving my point. Women see things when they are not there. That’s creativeness. What is meant by women ‘making’ men.”
“They don’t. They’ll make idols of nothing at all; and go on burning incense—all their lives.”
“I don’t believe women are ever deceived about their husbands. But they don’t give up hope. And there’s something in everybody. That’s what women see.”
“Nonsense, Miriam. Girls, with quite good brains and abilities will marry anything; accept its views and quote them.”
“Yes; just as they will show off a child’s tricks. Views and opinions are masculine things. Women are indifferent to them, really. Any set will do. I know the way a woman’s opinions and interests change with her different husbands, if she marries more than once, is supposed to prove the vacuity of her mind. Half the satirists of women have made their reputation on that idea. It isn’t so. It is that women can hold all opinions at once, or any, or none. It’s because they see the relations of things which don’t change, more than things which are always changing, and mostly the importance to men of the things men believe. But behind it all their own lives are untouched.”
“Behind.... What is there behind, Miriam?”
“Life.”