and with whom I had exchanged about sixty words--from the cradle so to
speak. And perhaps, I thought, looking down at Mrs Fyne (I had
remained standing) perhaps she thinks that this ought to be enough for a
sagacious assent.

She kept silent; and I looking at her with polite expectation, went on
addressing her mentally in a mood of familiar approval which would have
astonished her had it been audible: "You my dear at any rate are a
sincere woman..."

"I call a woman sincere," Marlow began again after giving me a cigar and
lighting one himself, "I call a woman sincere when she volunteers a
statement resembling remotely in form what she really would like to say,
what she really thinks ought to be said if it were not for the necessity
to spare the stupid sensitiveness of men. The women's rougher, simpler,
more upright judgment, embraces the whole truth, which their tact, their
mistrust of masculine idealism, ever prevents them from speaking in its
entirety. And their tact is unerring. We could not stand women
speaking the truth. We could not bear it. It would cause infinite
misery and bring about most awful disturbances in this rather mediocre,
but still idealistic fool's paradise in which each of us lives his own
little life--the unit in the great sum of existence. And they know it.
They are merciful. This generalisation does not apply exactly to Mrs
Fyne's outburst of sincerity in a matter in which neither my affections
nor my vanity were engaged. That's why, may be, she ventured so far.
For a woman she chose to be as open as the day with me. There was not
only the form but almost the whole substance of her thought in what she
said. She believed she could risk it. She had reasoned somewhat in
this way; there's a man, possessing a certain amount of sagacity..."

Marlow paused with a whimsical look at me. The last few words he had
spoken with the cigar in his teeth. He took it out now by an ample
movement of his arm and blew a thin cloud.

"You smile? It would have been more kind to spare my blushes. But as a
matter of fact I need not blush. This is not vanity; it is analysis.
We'll let sagacity stand. But we must also note what sagacity in this
connection stands for. When you see this you shall see also that there
was nothing in it to alarm my modesty. I don't think Mrs Fyne credited
me with the possession of wisdom tempered by common sense. And had I
had the wisdom of the Seven Sages of Antiquity,