himself has had to pay the penalty of this mixed gain. She tests him
by purely professional standards, as man tests man, or as he has tested
her, when in the ante-matrimonial days he weighed her _dot_ in the
scale of his need. The Frenchwoman and Shakespeare are entirely of one
mind; they perceive the great truth of unity in the scheme of things:

"Woman's test is man's taste."

This is the first among the great truths in the feminine grammar of
assent. French masculine taste, as its criterion, has established the
excellent doctrine of utilitarianism. With quick apprehension the
Frenchwoman has mastered this fact; she has cleverly taken a lesson
from ophidian habits--she can change her skin, quickly shedding the
sentimentalist, when it comes to serious action, to don the duller
raiment of utility. She has accepted her world, in other words,
as she finds it, with a philosopher's shrug. But the philosopher is
lined with the logician; for this system of life has accomplished the
miracle of making its women logical; they have grasped the subtleties
of inductive reasoning. Marriage, for example, they know is entered
into solely on the principle of mutual benefit; it is therefore a
partnership, _bon_; now, in partnerships sentiments and the emotions
are out of place, they only serve to dim the eye; those commodities,
therefore, are best conveyed to other markets than the matrimonial one;
for in purely commercial transactions one has need of perfect clearness
of vision, if only to keep one well practised in that simple game
called looking out for one's own interest. In Frenchwomen, the
ratiocinationist is extraordinarily developed; her logic penetrates to
the core of things.

Hence it is that Mouchard washes dishes.