of one is the way she droops and is so openly
bored by other girls that it is quite a blow to our vanity to be
obliged to be with her. We recognize the other at the approach of a
man, even if we cannot see him, by the changes in the girl's face. She
straightens herself, puts a hand on each side of her waist, and pushes
her belt down lower, moistens her lips, a sparkle comes into her eyes,
she touches her back hair, and runs a finger under the edge of her
veil. Then she smiles--such a smile as the other girls have not been
able to win from her in three hours.

These girls are very clever sometimes--even these little, soft,
kitteny girls, who do not know anything about books, who never read,
who never study, and are popularly called empty-headed even by the
very men who make love to them. These girls are keen beyond words to
express in their intuitive knowledge of human nature and the
differentiation between man nature and woman nature. They are capable
of using the outward and apparent motives of humanity for an effect,
and secretly of plying the subtlest and most occult.

It is difficult to designate their exact methods, and dangerous to
exploit them, for you immediately lay yourself open to the suspicion
of being capable of the same double-dealing yourself, or of its being
beneath your dignity to accuse any one of such duplicity; and yet
there are the causes and there are the results. You can shut your eyes
to them if you wish.

It is just here where a girl of this kind is so uncanny. Of course,
for those of us who wish to take a lofty view of love and lovers, who
wish to think each woman sought out by a man for her beauty and
virtues and married for love, it is very repugnant to have to face the
fact that there are hundreds of sweet, nice girls, of good family and
good training, who regard the securing for themselves of another
girl's lover a perfectly legitimate operation.

Not infrequently one hears it said that So-and-So is one of the most
attractive girls in town, because she can cut any girl out that she
tries to. You may say that a man so easily won is no great loss, or
that such things may occur in other circles of society but not in
yours. Possibly they do not. One does not deny the honor of honorable
men and women in any walk in life. But in polite society, fashionable
society, these things occur. Oftener in New York than in Boston, and
oftener in London and Paris than in New York. Indeed, we may sneer, a