“I can't quite see what good it would do me,” said Maud, “even if women could 'speak out,' as you say. If a man did n't care for one already, I can't see how it would make him know that one cared for him. I should think she would prefer to keep her secret.”
“That is n't what men do,” replied Lucy. “If they have such a secret, they tell it right away, and that is why they succeed. The way half the women are induced to fall in love is by being told the men are in love with them; you know that.”
“But men are different,” suggested Maud.
“Not a bit of it: they 're more so, if anything,” was the oracular response of the young wife. “Possibly there are men,” she continued,— “the story-tellers say so, anyhow,—who are attracted by repulsion and warmed by coldness, who like resistance for the pleasure of overcoming it. There must be a spice of the tyrant in such men. I wouldn't want to marry one of them. Fortunately, they're not common. I've noticed that love, like lightning, generally takes the path of least resistance with men as well as women. Just suppose now, in your case, that Mr. Burton had followed us home, and had overheard this conversation from behind that door.”
“No, no,” she added laughing, as Maud looked around apprehensively; “he is n't there. But if he had been there and had overheard you own that you were pining for him, what a lucky chance it would have been! If he, or any other man, once knew that a magnificent girl like you had done him the honor to fall in love with him, half the battle would be won, or I 'm no judge of men. But such lucky eavesdropping only happens in stories and plays; and for lack of it this youth is in a fair way to marry a chit of a girl who does not think half so much of him as you do, and of whom he will never think a quarter what he would of you. He is not, probably, entirely stupid either. All he wants, very likely, is just a hint as to where his true happiness lies: but, being a woman, you can't give it in words; and, being Maud Elliott, you can't give it in any other way, if you died for it. Really, Maud, the canon which makes it a woman's duty to be purely passive in love is exasperating, especially as it does not represent what anybody really believes, but only what they pretend to believe. Everybody knows that unrequited love comes as often to women as to men. Why, then, should n't they have an equal chance to seek requital? Why have not they the same right to look out for the happiness of their lives by all honorable means that men have? Surely it is far more to them to marry the men they love than to a man to marry any particular woman. It seems to me that making suitable matches is not such an easy matter that society can afford to leave the chief part of it to the stupider sex, giving women merely the right of veto. To be sure, even now women who are artful enough manage to evade the prohibition laid on their lips and make their preference known. I am proud to say that I have a royal husband, who would never have looked my way if I had not set out to make him do so; and if I do say it, who should n't, I flatter myself he has a better wife than he could have picked out without my help. There are plenty of women who can say the same thing; but, unluckily, it is the best sort of women, girls like you,—simple, sincere, noble, without arts of any sort,—who can't do this. On them the etiquette that forbids women to reveal their hearts except by subterfuge operates as a total disability. They can only sit with folded hands, looking on, pretending not to mind, while their husbands are run away with by others.”
Maud took up the poker and carefully arranged the coals under the grate in a heap. Then she said: “Suppose a girl did what you 've been speaking of. I mean, suppose she really said such a thing to a man,—said that she cared for him, or anything like that,—what do you suppose he would think of her? Don't you fancy she would be in danger of making him think very cheaply of her?”
“If she thought he were that kind of a man,” replied Lucy, “I can't understand her ever falling in love with him. Of course, I 'm not saying that he would necessarily respond by falling in love with her. She would have to take her chance of that; but I 'm sure, if he were a gentleman, she need have no fear of his thinking unworthily of her. If I had spoken to Dick in that way, even if he had never wanted to marry me, I know he would have had a soft spot for me in his heart all the rest of his life, out of which even his wife would not have quite crowded me. Why, how do we think of men whom we have refused? Do we despise them? Do we ridicule them? Some girls may, but they are not ladies. A low fellow might laugh at a woman who revealed a fondness for him which he did not return; but a gentleman, never. Her secret would be safe with him.”
“Girls!” It was the voice of Mrs. Elliott speaking from the upper hall. “Do you know how late it is? It is after one o'clock.”
“I suppose we might as well go to bed,” said Lucy. “There's no use sitting up to wait for women to get their rights. They won't get them to-night, I dare say; though, mark my word, some day they will.”
“This affair of yours may come out all right yet,” she said hopefully, as they went upstairs together. “If it does not, you can console yourself with thinking that people in general, and especially girls, never know what is good for them till afterward. Do you remember that summer I was at the beach, what a ninny I made of myself over that little Mr. Parker? How providential it was for me that he did not reciprocate. It gives me the cold shivers when I think what might have become of me if he' had proposed.”