“Are they distinct?” repeated Egeria, scornfully. “Are they distinct? Some one—a man, of course—has said that if Cleopatra had been without a front tooth the whole history of the world would have been changed; and Heine, you remember, when asked about Madame de Staël, remarked that, had Helen looked so, Troy would not have known a siege. Absurd! The sirens of this world who have swayed men’s hearts and imaginations have never been dependent on their front teeth or their back hair. If Cleopatra had lost a whole row, Antony and every other man who knew her would have insisted that women in the full possession of their molars were repulsive.”
“Ah!” cried the senator, triumphantly, “your words justify me. Beauty is some subtle essence of the soul, as I said.”
A faint, malicious sparkle brightened Egeria’s eyes. “Really, now, would you call the sirens of this world soulful creatures? They were and are psychologists, intuitive diviners of a man’s moods, capable of meeting him on every side of his nature; but——”
“Do you mean,” interrupted the senator, his eyes reflecting the sparkle of hers, “that their dominion over us is through an intellectual comprehension of our moods?”
“Good heavens, no!” disclaimed Egeria, in shocked tones. “Who said anything about the intellectual faculties of woman? I hear enough of them at my club. What I am trying to get at is that beauty without charm has always received a very frigid appreciation. Men prate of it, adore it, yawn, and—leave it. Of the two, they infinitely prefer charm without beauty. Now, senator, what is it you really admire in women?”
“I will tell you if you tell me first what women really admire in men?”
“Ah!” cried Egeria, with complacency, “there we have the advantage of you. We show twice the solid, substantial reasons for the faith that is in us that you do. Woman admires in man masculinity, virility; then brains, ability, distinction. She may loudly profess her devotion to ‘the carpet knight so trim.’ ‘Such a dear, thoughtful fellow, so sweet and sympathetic!’ But her secret preference is profoundly for the one who is ‘in stern fight a warrior grim, in camp a leader sage.’ She has not altered since the Stone Age, not in the least degree. When she was dragged by the hair from her accustomed cave to make a happy home in a new one, do you fancy she gave a thought to the recent companion of her joys and sorrows who was lying somewhere with his head stove in? Not she. Her pity was swallowed up in admiration for the victor, who, lightly ignoring the marks of her teeth and nails, haled her along to his den. It is to the strong men of this earth that the heart of woman goes out.
“Printed articles on the home,” she went on, with light derision, “are always urging husbands to show the same tender attention and loving courtesies to their wives after marriage as before. In reality, nothing would so bore a woman. Man is an idealist; woman is intensely practical. She would infinitely prefer to have him out winning the bread and butter and jam than sitting at her feet, penning sonnets to her eyebrow. After an experience of the before-wedded, tender courtesies, she would exclaim: ‘John, please don’t be such a fool. I am so sick of this lovey-dovey business, that I would really enjoy a good beating.’
“You see, she knows instinctively that ‘man’s love is of his life, a thing apart,’ and that, if he prefers showing her lover-like attentions to ranging the court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart, she has a freak on her hands. But how I run on; and you haven’t told me yet what it is that men admire in women?”
“Beauty,” still insisted the senator, enthusiastically. “Goodness, truth, constancy, amiability!”