I love her just the same, and cannot love her less!"


If you are interested in the spectacle of letting people paint their
own portraits, at the same time entirely unconscious that they are
doing so, ask a number of women and girls whether they dress to please
men or other women, and then listen carefully to what they say and
watch their faces well while they are saying it. Most of the girls
will say they dress to please women; and the reason I ask you to watch
their faces is that you may see the subtle changes going on by which
they persuade themselves that they are telling the truth. Women--nice,
sweet women, the kind _we_ know--seldom tell a real untruth. But they
have a way of persuading themselves that what they are about to say is
the truth. Women must believe in themselves before they can hope to
make other people believe in them; therefore they have themselves to
persuade first of all. Now, when men are going to utter an untruth
they never care whether they believe it or not, as long as they can
make other people believe it. And the so-called brutal honesty of man
is only brutal want of tact. That poor, patient, misused word,
"honesty"! How sick it must get of its abuse!

Yes, girls really believe, I suppose, that they dress for other girls.
But they do not. They dress for men. And only experience will teach
them the highest wisdom in the matter. But that they cannot acquire
until they believe that only another woman will know just how well
they are dressed, and, above all, whether Doucet turned them out, or a
dress-maker in the house at two dollars a day.

Men only take in the effect. Women know how the effect is produced. Of
course, now I am speaking of the general run of men and women: neither