we never let you see that we are clever enough to understand you,
because you don't want us to. And I must say that I cannot blame you.
If we girls are pretending to you that we have been waiting all our
lives for just you, we dislike to have you discover that we have
employed those years of waiting very satisfactorily to ourselves, so
much so that a casual observer would not have suspected the emptiness
of them.

So your funny little pretences are all very well, provided you do not
let us catch you in them. Only--possibly you do not know how many
times we do catch you. That is one of the chief points. You never know
how many times we see through you and beyond, and know just why you
did certain things much better than you yourselves know it. Of course,
it would not be wise for us to tell you this individually, for that
would break up the meeting; but there is no harm in letting you know
in bulk.

I suppose there is not a man in the world who would not be surprised
if he knew that we do not consider men good lovers. We have accepted
them, and been engaged to them, and married them, and pretended to
them, and, what is worse still, pretended to ourselves that they were
satisfactory, but the truth is they were not, and they are not, and
this is the first time we have dared to say so.

Now don't expect, if you go to your wife or your sweetheart and ask
her if this is so, that she is going to tell you the truth about it. I
wouldn't either. I would pretend that' the others might be
unsatisfactory as lovers, but that you--well, you just suited me,
that's all. I would have to, you understand, to keep you going. And
that is what your sweetheart will do. If she did not, you would get
cross and sulky, and there would be a week of unhappiness for both of
you, and then the girl would apologize and back down from her
position, and then you would go on exactly as you did before.

No, if you are going to profit by this at all, do not talk it over
with any woman you love. Talk it over with some clever woman who will
tell you the truth because she has nothing to lose. A man will always
take more from a woman whom he does not love than he will from his own
sweetheart or wife.

I wonder why things are so. Is it that ideal love is only founded upon
the truth and the superstructure is built of fabrications? Is it that
we women are much more artistic and more clever at masquerading the
truth that we make so much better lovers than the m