her features, gives away her soul in a smile. I have known women who
revealed their whole natures in this way.

No woman speaks aloud, but most women smile aloud. And the fact that in
so doing we unveil all our artifice, all the whirlpool of our inmost
being to each other, proves the extraordinary solidarity of our sex.

When did one woman ever betray another?

This loyalty is not rooted in noble sentiment, but proceeds rather from
the fear of betraying ourselves by revealing things that are the secret
common property of all womanhood.

And yet, if a woman could be found willing to reveal her entire self?...

I have often thought of the possibility, and at the present moment I am
not sure that she would not do our sex an infinite and eternal wrong.

We are compounded so strangely of good and bad, truth and falsehood,
that it requires the most delicate touch to unravel the tangled skein of
our natures and find the starting point.

No man is capable of the task.

During recent years it has become the fashion for notorious women to
publish their reminiscences in the form of a diary. But has any woman
reader discovered in all this literature a single intimate feature, a
single frank revelation of all that is kept hidden behind a thousand
veils?