. Never did a man
so need scolding.... And like any self-respecting woman I see that I use
half my words in the wrong meanings in order to emphasize my point. Of
course when I write woman in all that has gone before I don't mean
woman. It is a woman's privilege to talk or write incomprehensibly and
insist upon being understood. So that I expect you already to understand
that what I mean isn't that men are creative and unselfish and brotherly
and so forth and that women are spoiling and going to spoil the
game--although and notwithstanding that is exactly what I have
written--but that humans are creative and unselfish et cetera and so
forth, and that it is their sexual, egotistical, passionate side (which
is ever so much bigger relatively in a woman than in a man, and that is
why I wrote as I did) which is going to upset your noble and beautiful
apple-cart. But it is not only that by nature we are more largely and
gravely and importantly sexual than men but that men have shifted the
responsibility for attraction and passion upon us and made us pay in
servitude and restriction and blame for the common defect of the
species. So that you see really I was right all along in writing of this
as though it was women when it wasn't, and I hope now it is unnecessary
for me to make my meaning clearer than it is now and always has been in
this matter. And so, resuming our discourse, Stephen, which only my
sense of your invincible literalness would ever have interrupted, what
are you going to do with us?

"I gather from a hint rather than accept as a statement that you propose
to give us votes.

"Stephen!--do you really think that we are going to bring anything to
bear upon public affairs worth having? I know something of the
contemporary feminine intelligence. Justin makes no serious objection to
a large and various circle of women friends, and over my little
sitting-room fire in the winter and in my corners of our various gardens
in the summer and in walks over the heather at Martens and in Scotland
there are great talks and confessions of love, of mental freedom, of
ambitions, and belief and unbelief--more particularly of unbelief. I
have sometimes thought of compiling a dictionary of unbelief, a great
list of the things that a number of sweet, submissive,
value-above-rubies wives have told me they did not believe in. It would
amaze their husbands beyond measure. The state of mind of women about
these things, Stephen, is dreadfu