scrupulous respectfulness of his demeanor, his unfeigned inward
humility, as far removed from servility on the one side as from
assumption on the other, and less the opponent than the
offspring of self-respect, his thorough gentleness, guilelessness,
deference, his manly, unselfish homage, are such qualities, and
such alone, as lead womanhood captive. Listen to me, you
rattling, roaring, rollicking Ralph Roister Doisters, you calm,
inevitable Gradgrinds, as smooth, as sharp, as bright as steel,
and as soulless, and you men, whoever, whatever, and wherever
you are, with fibres of rope and nerves of wire, there is many
and many a woman who tolerates you because she finds you, but
there is nothing in her that ever goes out to seek you. Be not
deceived by her placability. "Here he is," she says to herself,
"and something must be done about it. Buried under Ossa and
Pelion somewhere he must be supposed to have a soul, and the
sooner he is dug into the sooner it will be exhumed." So she
digs. She would never have made you, nor of her own free-will
elected you; but being made, such as you are, and on her hands
in one way or another, she carves and chisels, and strives to
evoke from the block a breathing statue. She may succeed so
far as that you shall become her Frankenstein, a great, sad,
monstrous, incessant, inevitable caricature of her ideal, the
monument at once of her success and her failure, the object of
her compassion, the intimate sorrow of her soul, a vast and
dreadful form into which her creative power can breathe the
breath of life, but not of sympathy. Perhaps she loves you
with a remorseful, pitying, protesting love, and carries you on
her shuddering shoulders to the grave. Probably, as she is good
and wise, you will never find it out. A limpid brook ripples in
beauty and bloom by the side of muddy, stagnant self-complacence,