and went on
reading and laughing and I thought she was quite happy, when suddenly
she drew the book from her and burst out, "Oh, Cassandra, why do you
torment me? Don't you know that our belief in man's intellect is the
greatest fallacy of them all?" "What?" I exclaimed. "Ask any journalist,
schoolmaster, politician or public house keeper in the land and they
will all tell you that men are much cleverer than women." "As if I
doubted it," she said scornfully. "How could they help it? Haven't we
bred them and fed and kept them in comfort since the beginning of time
so that they may be clever even if they're nothing else? It's all our
doing!" she cried. "We insisted upon having intellect and now we've got
it. And it's intellect," she continued, "that's at the bottom of it.
What could be more charming than a boy before he has begun to cultivate
his intellect? He is beautiful to look at; he gives himself no airs; he
understands the meaning of art and literature instinctively; he goes
about enjoying his life and making other people enjoy theirs. Then they
teach him to cultivate his intellect. He becomes a barrister, a civil
servant, a general, an author, a professor. Every day he goes to an
office. Every year he produces a book. He maintains a whole family by
the products of his brain--poor devil! Soon he cannot come into a room
without making us all feel uncomfortable; he condescends to every woman
he meets, and dares not tell the truth even to his own wife; instead of
rejoicing our eyes we have to shut them if we are to take him in our
arms. True, they console themselves with stars of all shapes, ribbons
of all shades, and incomes of all sizes--but what is to console us? That
we shall be able in ten years' time to spend a week-end at Lahore? Or
that the least insect in Japan has a name twice the length of its body?
Oh, Cassandra, for Heaven's sake let us devise a method by which men may
bear children! It is our only chance. For unless we provide them with
some innocent occupation we shall get neither good people nor good
books; we shall perish beneath the fruits of their unbridled activity;
and not a human being will survive to know that there once was
Shakespeare!"

"It is too late," I replied. "We cannot provide even for the children
that we have."

"And then you ask me to believe in intellect," she said.

While we spoke, men were crying hoarsely and wearily in the street, and,
listening, we heard that the Treaty of Pe