as "looking-glasses."

"Looking-glasses? Men's looking-glasses? And why not?" I exclaimed. "It
is not for us women to decry that looking-glass side of us. It is
serious, more serious than you think, for on the beauty of our
reflection often depend our ardour, our courage, our very character and
all the energies that create or affect our actions. Besides, whether men
or women, we can only reflect one another and we ourselves do not become
conscious of our powers until the day of the supreme love, as if, till
then, we had only seen ourselves in pocket-mirrors which never reflect
more than a morsel of our lives, a movement, a gesture ... and which
always distort it!"

Every mouth quivered with laughter. I insisted:

"If women often have so much difficulty in learning to know their own
characters, it is because most men are scornful mirrors, occupied with
nothing smaller than the universe and never dreaming of reflecting women
except in a grudging and imperfect fashion."

"It is true," said Marcienne, thinking of her lover, a man whose
domineering temper often made him unjust to her. "Men's lives would be
less serenely confident if our amiable and accommodating souls did not
afford them a vision incessantly embellished by love ... and always
having infinity for a background!"

And, with a satirical smile, she added:

"Let us accept the part of looking-glasses, but let us place our gods in
a still higher light! They will not complain; and we shall at least have
the advantage of seeing beyond them a little space and brightness."

The conversation then assumed a more personal character, each of us
thinking of the well-beloved: Marcienne, ever mournful and passionate;
the gentle Blanche, anxious, secretly plighted to an absent lover; and
Cecilia, all absorbed in her young happiness with the husband of her
choice.

5

Hermione and her cluster of girls had gradually come nearer. She dresses
badly, she does her hair with uncompromising severity, but, in spite of
it all, Hermione is very beautiful; and her loveliness triumphs over her
commonplace clothes, even as her generous heart and the noble
restlessness of her mind keep her on a plane which is loftier than the
narrow dogmas of her creed.

During a moment's silence, I hear her answer a question put by Rose:

"Oh, what does it matter if I am wrong, as long as I make others happy!"

And all my friends, like a sheaf of glowing flowers, seemed to be bound
together