ion for disinterestedness, when all that he desired was to take
the matter out of the region of credit altogether. He believed indeed
that women valued the pleasure of making an impression, of exercising
influence, too highly, and that in this point their perception seemed
to fail; they did not understand that a man acts very often from
impersonal motives, and is interested in the doing of the thing itself,
whatever it may happen to be, rather than in the effect that his action
may have upon other people. It was part of the high-mindedness of
women that they could not understand that a man should be so absorbed
in the practical execution of a matter. They looked upon men's
ambitions, their desire to do or make something--a book, a picture, a
poem--as a sort of game in which they could not believe that any one
could be seriously interested. Hugh indeed seemed to divine the
curious fact that, generally speaking, men and women looked upon the
preoccupations and employments of the opposite sex as rather childish;
a man would be immersed in practical activities, in business, in
organisation, in education, in communicating definite knowledge, in
writing books, in attending meetings--this he thought to be the serious
and real business of the world; and he was inclined to look upon
relationships with other people, sentiment, tender affections, wistful
thoughts of others, as a sort of fireside amusement and recreation.

Women, on the other hand, found their real life in these things,
desired to please, to win and retain affection, to admire and to be
admired, to love and be loved; and they tended to look upon material
things--comfort, wealth, business, work, art--as essentially secondary
things, which had of course a certain value, but which were not to be
weighed in the scale with emotional things. There were naturally many
exceptions to this; there were hard, business-like, practical women;
there were emotional, tender-hearted, sensitive men; but the general
principle held good. And thus it was that men and women regarded the
supreme emotion of love from such different points of view, and failed
so often to comprehend the way in which the opposite sex regarded it;
to women it was but the natural climax, the raising and heightening of
their habitual mood into one great momentous passion; it was the flower
of life slowly matured into bloom; to men it was more a surprising and
tremendous experience, an amazing episode, cutti