Hints for Lovers by Arnold Haultain
page 11 of 191 (05%)
page 11 of 191 (05%)
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law; for she knows instinctively that an easy victory prognosticates a
fickle victor. Is she abundantly endowed with the very attributes that make for wife-and mother-hood, a strong and swaying passion and an affection unbounded, she must hold them in leash with exemplary patience; for, alas! Are they given the rein for a single passing moment, instead of being accounted unto her for righteousness, they work her ruin. She must win her one man, and she must win him for life; but she cannot pick or choose, for she must wait to be asked. If she make test of many admirers, she is described as a flirt; if, conscientious and demure, she await her fate, a desirable fate is by no means assured. In truth it seems that too often a girl must dissemble--hateful as dissemblance in men. T'is a hard road indeed that a girl has to travel. To win her a fellow-farer for life, she must go out of her way to accommodate so many travelers: and this one is lured by this, and that one by that, and another by something unnoticed by the throng. But, an she dissembles one iota too much, her fellow-farers look askance, and he who eventually joins her for good upbraids her for that by which she won. Dissemblance is indeed at once the boon and the bane of a girl: without it, she thinks to be overlooked (often enough a preposterous assumption); with it, she is looked upon too much. And always, Always a girl has to pretend that never did she descend to dissemblance. --Which, nevertheless, is sometimes absolutely true, for Just now and then there happens that miracle of miracles, where their |
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