what is called chivalrous. The American is chivalrous for the simple
reason that the initiative is not in his hands. His chivalry is really a
sort of coquetry.




20.


The Unattainable Ideal


But here I rather depart from the point, which is this: that the
average woman is not strategically capable of bringing down the
most tempting game within her purview, and must thus content
herself with a second, third, or nth choice. The only women who
get their first choices are those who run in almost miraculous
luck and those too stupid to formulate an ideal--two very small
classes, it must be obvious. A few women, true enough, are so
pertinacious that they prefer defeat to compromise. That is to say,
they prefer to put off marriage indefinitely rather than to marry
beneath the highest leap of their fancy. But such women may be
quickly dismissed as abnormal, and perhaps as downright diseased
in mind; the average woman is well-aware that marriage is far better
for her than celibacy, even when it falls a good deal short of her
primary hopes, and she is also well aware that the differences
between man and man, once mere money is put aside, are so slight
as to be practically almost negligible. Thus the average woman is
under none of the common masculine illusions about elective