ou
say I am honest, and I will be. Then let me till you that I have been
used to luxuries, and I can't do without them. I might have married
men--lots would have had me. But who marries one like me but a fool? and
I could not marry a fool. The man I marry I must respect. He could not
respect me--I should know him to be a fools and I should be worse off
than I am now. As I am now, they may look as pious as they like--I laugh
at them!"

And so forth: direr things. Imputations upon wives: horrible exultation
at the universal peccancy of husbands. This lovely outcast almost made
him think she had the right on her side, so keenly her Parthian arrows
pierced the holy centres of society, and exposed its rottenness.

Mrs. Mount's house was discreetly conducted: nothing ever occurred to
shock him there. The young man would ask himself where the difference was
between her and the Women of society? How base, too, was the army of
banded hypocrites! He was ready to declare war against them on her
behalf. His casus beli, accurately worded, would have read curiously.
Because the world refused to lure the lady to virtue with the offer of a
housemaid's place, our knight threw down his challenge. But the lady had
scornfully rebutted this prospect of a return to chastity. Then the form
of the challenge must be: Because the world declined to support the lady
in luxury for nothing! But what did that mean? In other words: she was to
receive the devil's wages without rendering him her services. Such an
arrangement appears hardly fair on the world or on the devil. Heroes will
have to conquer both before they will get them to subscribe to it.

Heroes, however, are not in the habit of wording their declarations of
war at all. Lance in rest they challenge and they charge. Like women they
trust to instinct, and graft on it the muscle of men. Wide fly the
leisurely-remonstrating hosts: institutions are scattered, they know not
wherefore, heads are broken that have not the balm of a reason why. 'Tis
instinct strikes! Surely there is something divine in instinct.

Still, war declared, where were these hosts? The hero could not charge
down on the ladies and gentlemen in a ballroom, and spoil the quadrille.
He had sufficient reticence to avoid sounding his challenge in the Law
Courts; nor could he well go into the Houses of Parliament with a
trumpet, though to come to a tussle with the nation's direct
representatives did seem the likelier method. It