Before the gift, a woman's qualms exasperate the man;

After the gift, the man's indifference exasperates the woman;

* * *

It is folly to think that love and friendship exhaust the varieties of
human relationships:--

The relationships between earthly souls are as complex and multiform as
those between heavenly bodies.

In one thing does friendship excel love: it is always reciprocal; one
friend presupposes another. Not so a lover.

Friendship is largely a masculine sentiment;--except among schoolgirls.

The friendship that exists between a man and a woman should be called by
another name. It cannot be wholly Platonic (3); it need not be wholly
Dantesque. Yet women generally strive to make it the one; and men often
try to make it the other. And yet again,

How many women there be, would, if they could, transmute love into
friendship! That is to say,

Women regard a man's friendship as a delicate flattery to themselves; yet
they instinctively know, though they try hard to forget, that a man's
friendship for a woman is extremely likely to transcend the bounds of
friendship.