"You mean that such women never really love?"

"Perhaps once, Frank, but only after a fashion. The rest was mere
imitation of their first impulses."

"And this woman?"

"Well, the end came sooner than I expected. I tell you I was shocked at
the look in her face when I saw it again. That light had flickered out;
the sensitive alertness of hand, eye, voice, and carriage had died away;
lines had settled in the face, and the face itself had gone cold, with
that hard, cold passiveness which comes from exhausted emotions and a
closed heart. The jewels she wore might have been put upon a statue with
equal effect."

"It seems to me that we might pitch into men in these things and not make
women the dreadful examples," said a voice from the corner. It was the
voice of Richard, who had but just entered.

"My dear Dick," said his father, "men don't make such frightful examples,
because these things mean less to men than they do to women. Romance is
an incident to a man; he can even come through an affaire with no ideals
gone, with his mental fineness unimpaired; but it is different with a
woman. She has more emotion than mind, else there were no cradles in the
land. Her standards are set by the rules of the heart, and when she has
broken these rules she has lost her standard too. But to come back, it
is true, I think, as I said, that man or woman must not expect too much
out of life, but be satisfied with what they can get within the normal
courses of society and convention and home, and the end thereof is peace
--yes, upon my soul, it's peace."