is, until the man has formally avowed the delusion, and so cut off
his retreat; to do otherwise would be to bring down upon their heads
the mocking and contumely of all their sisters. With them, falling in
love thus appears in the light of an afterthought, or, perhaps
more accurately, in the light of a contagion. The theory, it would
seem, is that the love of the man, laboriously avowed, has inspired it
instantly, and by some unintelligible magic; that it was non-existent
until the heat of his own flames set it off. This theory, it must be
acknowledged, has a certain element of fact in it. A woman seldom
allows herself to be swayed by emotion while the principal business
is yet afoot and its issue still in doubt; to do so would be to expose a
degree of imbecility that is confined only to the half-wits of the sex.
But once the man is definitely committed, she frequently unbends a
bit, if only as a relief from the strain of a fixed purpose, and so,
throwing off her customary inhibitions, she, indulges in the luxury
of a more or less forced and mawkish sentiment. It is, however,
almost unheard of for her to permit herself this relaxation before the
sentimental intoxication of the man is assured. To do
otherwise--that is, to confess, even post facto, to an anterior
descent,--would expose her, as I have said, to the scorn of all other
women. Such a confession would be an admission that emotion had
got the better of her at a critical intellectual moment, and in the
eyes of women, as in the eyes of the small minority of genuinely
intelligent men, no treason to the higher cerebral centres could be
more disgraceful.




8.