"Oh, but I did. We talked for two hours. It was almost comical—the sheer delight in talking to a woman once more. I have never been what is called a woman's woman, but I always had my friends, and I suddenly realized that I had missed my own sex."
"I shouldn't fancy that you two would have much in common."
"You forget that we were both nurses. We compared experiences: methods of nursing, operations, doctors, surgeons, shell shock, plastic surgery, the various characteristics of wounded men—all the rest of it."
"It must have been an exciting conversation."
"You never could be brought to believe it, but it was. Afterward, we talked of other things. She seems to me quite a remarkable woman."
"Entirely so. What is it she lacks that prevents men from falling in love with her? Men flock there, and she is more discussed as a mind and a personality than any woman among us; but it is all above the collar. And yet those handsome-ugly women often captivate men."
"You ask one woman why another cannot fascinate men! I should say that it is for want of transmission. The heart and passions are there—I will risk guessing that she has been tragically in love at least once—but there is something wrong with the conduit that carries sexual magnetism; it has been bent upward to the brain instead of directed straight to the sex for which it was designed. Moreover, she is too coldly and obviously analytical and lacks the tact to conceal it. Men do not mind being skewered when they are out for purely intellectual enjoyment, but they do not love it."
Clavering laughed. "I fancy your own mind is quite as coldly analytical, but nature took care of your conduits and you see to the tact. You cannot teach Gora how to redistribute her magnetism, but you might give her a few points."
"They would be wasted. It is merely that I am a woman of the world, something she will never be. And in my hey-day, I can assure you, I was not analytical."
"Your hey-day?"