She would not know her child."
She is paying now for the sweetness of "stolen waters" and the pleasantness of bread "eaten in secret." For the next week what pleasure will husband, father, or brother, derive from her society. She is ill and peevish—she is damaged both in body and soul. For the next week, did I say? Well, I meant until the next invitation to a dance arrives. That is the magic elixir that will brighten the dull eyes and recall the dead smiles to life. Then invoking the rejuvenating spirit of the cosmetic-box and tricked out in the finery which those most near, but not most dear, to her have toiled to purchase, she will sally forth to lavish upon the lechers of the ball-room a gracious sweetness which she never showed at home.
But where is Apollo all this time?
We left him burning with half satiated lust before the gate of his paramour's mansion. Where will he go to complete his debauch? At what strange fountains will he quench the flame that is devouring him? Go ask the harlot! She will reap the harvest that has ripened in the warm embrace of maids and mothers. She is equally fortunate with the husband described above. Ah, well! verily it is an ill wind that blows nobody good.
The Waltz is, therefore, in its effects, fearfully disastrous to both sexes, but nevertheless the woman is the greater sufferer—physically, because what is fatal excess for a woman may be only hurtful indulgence for a man, and morally, because she loses that without which her beauty and grace are but a curse—man's respect.
And her punishment is just, her fault being more inexcusable than his. For woman is the natural and acknowledged custodian of morals. It is she who fixes the standard of modesty—a variable standard, it is true, different in different ages and countries, but always sufficiently well-defined. She draws across the path of passion, lines limiting, on the one hand, the license of masculine approach, on the other, the liberty of feminine concession. To a certain extent man may blamelessly accept whatever privileges she is pleased to accord him, without troubling himself to consider "too curiously" their consistency with the general tenor of her; decrees. It is her discretion in such matters that must, in a large, way, preserve the race from fatal excess. When, therefore, she shamelessly violates this sacred trust which nature and society have confided to her, it is to be expected that the ball-room roué should regard her as something lower than the harlot, who at least ministers to his lusts in a natural manner.
But, what is worse still, she also loses moral caste with those who have more than a negative respect for honorable women. For even your gentleman is no professor of heroic virtues, and the same easy courtesy with which he dismisses the soliciting courtesan, restrains him from wounding, even by implication, the merely facile fair being whom favoring fortune has as yet prevented from taking to the street. He dissembles his disgust, begs the honor of her hand for the next dance, flutters her pulses to her soul's satisfaction, and regards her ever thereafter with tranquil, philosophical contempt. And so they come to mutually despise each other; she sets no value on his flattering praises, he no longer cares for her good opinion—the wine of woman's approval has gone stale, and the sunshine of man's admiration is darkened in her eyes.
