But the cleverest women hide their real selves behind a factitious
smile.

Men do not know how to smile. They look more or less benevolent, more or
less pleased, more or less love-smitten; but they are not pliable or
subtle enough to smile. A woman who is not sufficiently prudent to mask
her features, gives away her soul in a smile. I have known women who
revealed their whole natures in this way.

No woman speaks aloud, but most women smile aloud. And the fact that in
so doing we unveil all our artifice, all the whirlpool of our inmost
being to each other, proves the extraordinary solidarity of our sex.

When did one woman ever betray another?

This loyalty is not rooted in noble sentiment, but proceeds rather from
the fear of betraying ourselves by revealing things that are the secret
common property of all womanhood.

And yet, if a woman could be found willing to reveal her entire self?...

I have often thought of the possibility, and at the present moment I am
not sure that she would not do our sex an infinite and eternal wrong.

We are compounded so strangely of good and bad, truth and falsehood,
that it requires the most delicate touch to unravel the tangled skein of
our natures and find the starting point.

No man is capable of the task.

During recent years it has become the fashion for notorious women to
publish their reminiscences in the form of a diary. But has any woman
reader discovered in all this literature a single intimate feature, a
single frank revelation of all that is kept hidden behind a thousand
veils?

If indeed one of these unhappy women ventured to write a plain,
unvarnished, but poignant, description of her inner life, where would
she find a publisher daring enough to let his name appear on the cover
of the book?

I once knew a man who, stirred by a good and noble impulse, and
confident of his power, endeavoured to "save" a very young girl whom he
had rescued from a house of ill-fame. He took her home and treated her
like a sister. He lavished time and confidence upon her. His pride at
the transformation which took place in her passed all bounds. The girl
was as grateful as a mongrel and as modest as the bride in a romantic
novel. He then resolved to make her his wife. But one fine day she
vanished, leaving behind her a note containing these words: "Many thanks
for your kindness, but you bore me."

During the whole time they had lived together, he had not grasped the
faintest n