s on taste and education. It has
something to do with habit and experience. I know I shall not be able to
describe this trait, yet when I look up into her eyes--eyes, remember,
which are mere fictions of my imagination--when I look into her face,
when I see her move so statelily into my presence, I recognize there
that portion of her which she has inherited from the Aphrodite of other
days; and this I know is beauty. It is not the beauty of an
hallucination, the halo which a heart diseased casts about the head of
its idol. It is the beauty which is seen by a sober second thought, a
beauty which does not so much dazzle as it delights; a beauty which does
not fade with the passing hour, but stays through the heat and burden of
the day and until the day is done.

The beauty which my ideal woman inherited from Aphrodite is not a fading
one. It is not simply a youthful freshness which the first decade of
womanhood will wither. It is a beauty which abides; it is a beauty in
which the charm of seventeen becomes a real essence of seventy; it is a
beauty which is not produced by any artificial pose of the head or by
any possible banging of the hair; it is a beauty which the art of
dressing may adorn but can never create; it is a beauty which does not
overwhelm the heart like an avalanche, but which eats it slowly but
surely away as a trickling stream cuts and grooves the solid granite.

I regard true beauty as the divinest gift which woman has received; and
was not Pandora, the first of mythical women, endowed with every gift?
And was not Eve, the first of orthodox women, the type of every
feminine perfection? Only Protogyna, the first of scientific women, was
poorly and meanly endowed. If I were a woman I would value health and
wealth; I would think kindly of honor and reputation; I would greatly
prize knowledge and truth; but above all I would be beautiful--possessed
of that strange and mighty charm which would lead a crowd of slaves
behind my triumphal car and compel a haughty world to bow in humble
submission at my feet.

In the third place my ideal woman has inherited the intellect of Pallas.
And this inheritance is necessary in order to secure for her a true
possession of the gifts of Aphrodite. For a woman can never be truly
beautiful who does not possess intelligence. It is a matter of the
utmost indifference to me what studies my ideal has pursued. She may be
a panglot or she may scarcely know her vernacular. If she s