y're as like as a box of ninepins..."

"But what do you think of him...?" "But really there's nothing to
think" ... "But don't you think he'd do for Hester?" etcetera, etcetera.

She has just married the one before Hester to what she calls the
perfect type of an English country gentleman--meaning that he owns an
historical castle in Scotland, a coal mine in Wales and a mansion in
Park Lane. Heavens! I'd rather follow the fortunes of a Nihilist and be
sent to Siberia, or drive wild cattle and fight wild blacks with one of
your Bush cowboys, than I'd marry the perfect type of an English
country gentleman! Give me something REAL--anything but the
semi-detached indifference of most of the couples one knows. No. MY man
must be strong enough to carry ME off my feet and to break down all the
conventions of "OUR CLASS." Then, I'd cheerfully tramp through the
forest beside him, if it came to that, or cook his dinner in front of
our wigwam. Now, if my Soldier of Fortune were to ask me to climb the
Andes with him in search of that buried treasure! But he won't: and--I
confess it, Joan--I'm in mortal terror of his insisting upon my
entering the sphere of stock-jobbing respectability instead, and of my
being weak enough to consent. But we haven't got anywhere near that yet.

So far, I'm just--living--trying to make up my mind what it is that I
want most. Do you know, that since my violent attraction to him--or
whatever you like to call it--all sorts of odd bits of revelation have
come to me as to the things that really matter!

For one thing, I'm pretty certain that the ultimate end of Being is
Beauty and that Love means Beauty and Beauty means Love. The immediate
result of this discovery is that I'm buying clothes with a reckless
disregard of the state of my banking account.

I begin to understand and to sympathise with that pathetic striving
after beauty which one sees in the tawdry finery and exaggerated
hairdressing of a kitchenmaid--Rosamond Tallant has one who is
wonderful to behold as she mounts the area steps on her Sundays out.
Formerly I should have been horrified at that kitchenmaid. Now I have
quite a fellow-feeling with her piteous attempts to make herself
attractive to her young man, the grocer's boy or the under-footman I
suppose. Am I not at this very moment sitting with complexion cream
daubed on my face, in order that I may appear more attractive to MY
young man. I know now how Molly's maid--who is keeping comp