never admitted to the secret of, to impose upon the world. In nine out
of ten cases he more than half believes that he is what his wife tells
him he is. At any rate, she manages him as easily as the keeper does the
elephant, with only a bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end. Usually
she flatters him, but she has the means of pricking clear through his
hide on occasion. It is the great secret of her power to have him think
that she thoroughly believes in him.

THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH Us. And you call this hypocrisy? I have
heard authors, who thought themselves sly observers of women, call it
so.

HERBERT. Nothing of the sort. It is the basis on which society rests,
the conventional agreement. If society is about to be overturned, it is
on this point. Women are beginning to tell men what they really think of
them; and to insist that the same relations of downright sincerity and
independence that exist between men shall exist between women and men.
Absolute truth between souls, without regard to sex, has always been the
ideal life of the poets.

THE MISTRESS. Yes; but there was never a poet yet who would bear to have
his wife say exactly what she thought of his poetry, any more than
he would keep his temper if his wife beat him at chess; and there is
nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by a woman.

HERBERT. Well, women know how to win by losing. I think that the reason
why most women do not want to take the ballot and stand out in the open
for a free trial of power, is that they are reluctant to change the
certain domination of centuries, with weapons they are perfectly
competent to handle, for an experiment. I think we should be better
off if women were more transparent, and men were not so systematically
puffed up by the subtle flattery which is used to control them.

MANDEVILLE. Deliver me from transparency. When a woman takes that guise,
and begins to convince me that I can see through her like a ray of
light, I must run or be lost. Transparent women are the truly dangerous.
There was one on ship-board [Mandeville likes to say that; he has just
returned from a little tour in Europe, and he quite often begins his
remarks with "on the ship going over;" the Young Lady declares that
he has a sort of roll in his chair, when he says it, that makes her
sea-sick] who was the most innocent, artless, guileless, natural bunch
of lace and feathers you ever saw; she was all candor and helplessness
a