The woman who has never succumbed to temptation, often because temptation has never been in her way, is inexorable for the weaknesses of her sex.
Nine times out of ten the ugly woman will at once accept as reliably true any gossip she hears on the subject of a beautiful woman. She draws herself up and thinks: 'No one could ever say such things of me.' And she is right: no one would who did not wish to be grossly flattering.
Only the woman who has yielded to temptation is charitable, and will help the fallen angel. Like Dido, she says:
'Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.'
It is because I love and revere woman that I pity the fallen one, and cannot say an unkind word of her.
I think that men should go down on their knees before the fallen women, and implore their pardon, in the name of their sex, for the injury—the criminal, irretrievable injury—that has been done to them by the curs and scoundrels who are the cause of their present condition.