Branch and Newport, and exchanged a weary
amount of fashionable gossip; and you never
guessed that I was governed by any deeper interest!
I have purposely uttered ridiculous platitudes,
and you were as smilingly courteous as if
you enjoyed them: I have let fall remarks whose
hollowness and selfishness could not have escaped
you, and have waited in vain for a word of sharp,
honest, manly reproof. Your manner to me was
unexceptionable, as it was to all other women:
but there lies the source of my disappointment,
of--yes--of my sorrow!

"You appreciate, I cannot doubt, the qualities
in woman which men value in one another--culture,
independence of thought, a high and earnest apprehension
of life; but you know not how to seek
them. It is not true that a mature and unperverted
woman is flattered by receiving only the
general obsequiousness which most men give to
the whole sex. In the man who contradicts and
strives with her, she discovers a truer interest,
a nobler respect. The empty-headed, spindle-shanked
youths who dance admirably, understand
something of billiards, much less of horses, and
still less of navigation, soon grow inexpressibly
wearisome to us; but the men who adopt their
social courtesy, never seeking to arouse, uplift, instruct
us, are a bitter disappointment.

"What would have been the end, had you really
found me? Certainly a sincere, satisfying friendship.
No mysterious magnetic force has drawn
you to me or held you near me, nor has my experiment
inspired me with an interest which cannot
be given up without a personal pang. I am
grieved, for the sake of all men and all women.
Yet, understand me! I mean no slightest reproach.
I esteem and honor you for what you
are. Farewell!"

There. Nothing could be kinder in tone, nothing more humiliating in
substance. I was sore and offended for a few days; but I soon began to
see, and ever more and more clearly, that she was wholly right. I was
sure, also, that any further attempt to correspond with her would be
vain. It all comes of taking society just as we find it, and supposing
that conventional courtesy is the only safe ground on which men and
women can meet.

The fact is--there's no use in hiding it from myself (and I see, by
your face, that the letter cuts into your own conscience)--she is a
free, courageous, independent character, and