her hair, the pretty cut of
her frock, the glint of her white teeth, the arch of her eye-brow,
the graceful curve of her arm. I listen to the exquisite murmur of
her voice. Gradually I fall asleep--but only for an instant. At once,
observing it, she raises her voice ever so little, and I am awake. Then
to sleep again--slowly and charmingly down that slippery hill of dreams.
And then awake again, and then asleep again, and so on.

I ask you seriously: could anything be more unutterably beautiful? The
sensation of falling asleep is to me The most exquisite in the world.
I delight in it so much that I even look forward to death itself with a
sneaking wonder and desire. Well, here is sleep poetized and made doubly
sweet. Here is sleep set to the finest music in the world. I match this
situation against any that you ran think of. It is not only enchanting;
it is also, in a very true sense, ennobling. In the end, when the girl
grows prettily miffed and throws me out, I return to my sorrows somehow
purged and glorified. I am a better man in my own sight. I have grazed
upon the fields of asphodel. I have been genuinely, completely and
unregrettably happy.

47. Apologia in Conclusion

At the end I crave the indulgence of the cultured reader for the
imperfections necessarily visible in all that I have here set
down--imperfections not only due to incomplete information and fallible
logic, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to certain fundamental
weaknesses of the sex to which I have the honour to belong. A man is
inseparable from his congenital vanities and stupidities, as a dog is
inseparable from its fleas. They reveal themselves in everything he says
and does, but they reveal themselves most of all when he discusses the
majestic mystery of woman. Just as he smirks and rolls his eyes in her
actual presence, so he puts on apathetic and unescapable clownishness
when he essays to dissect her in the privacy of the laboratory. There
is no book on woman by a man that is not a stupendous compendium of
posturings and imbecilities. There are but two books that show even a
superficial desire to be honest--"The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman
Suffrage," by Sir Almroth Wright, and this one. Wright made a gallant
attempt to tell the truth, but before he got half way through his task
his ineradicable donkeyishness as a male overcame his scientific frenzy
as a psychologist, and so he hastily washed his hands of the business,