she would not have been
moved to confidence or admiration. The secret scorn of women for the
capacity to consider judiciously and to express profoundly a meditated
conclusion is unbounded. They have no use for these lofty exercises
which they look upon as a sort of purely masculine game--game meaning a
respectable occupation devised to kill time in this man-arranged life
which must be got through somehow. What women's acuteness really
respects are the inept `ideas' and the sheep-like impulses by which our
actions and opinions are determined in matters of real importance. For
if women are not rational they are indeed acute. Even Mrs Fyne was
acute. The good woman was making up to her husband's chess-player
simply because she had scented in him that small portion of
`femininity,' that drop of superior essence of which I am myself aware;
which, I gratefully acknowledge, has saved me from one or two
misadventures in my life either ridiculous or lamentable, I am not very
certain which. It matters very little. Anyhow misadventures. Observe
that I say `femininity,' a privilege--not `feminism,' an attitude. I am
not a feminist. It was Fyne who on certain solemn grounds had adopted
that mental attitude; but it was enough to glance at him sitting on one
side, to see that he was purely masculine to his finger-tips, masculine
solidly, densely, amusingly,--hopelessly."

I did glance at him. You don't get your sagacity recognised by a man's
wife without feeling the propriety and even the need to glance at the
man now and again. So I glanced at him. Very masculine. So much so
that "hopelessly" was not the last word of it. He was helpless. He was
bound and delivered by it. And if by the obscure promptings of my
composite temperament I beheld him with malicious amusement, yet being
in fact, by definition and especially from profound conviction, a man, I
could not help sympathising with him largely. Seeing him thus disarmed,
_so_ completely captive by the very nature of things I was moved to
speak to him kindly.

"Well. And what do you think of it?"

"I don't know. How's one to tell. But I say that the thing is done now
and there's an end of it," said the masculine creature as bluntly as his
innate solemnity permitted.

Mrs Fyne moved a little in her chair. I turned to her and remarked
gently that this was a charge, a criticism, which was often made. Some
people always ask: What could he see in her? Others w