My experience has never been large enough to enable me to penetrate the mysteries of woman’s mind. Judging from what little I have seen of the surface from the outside, I have come to the belief that women are ever ready to bestow their heart where sorrow cannot but be their lot. They will either string their garland of acceptance[1] for some brute of a man who will trample it under foot and defile it in the mire of his passions, or dedicate it to some idealist, on whose neck it will get no hold, attenuated as he is, like the dream-stuff of his imaginings.
When left to do their own choosing, women invariably reject ordinary men like me, made up of gross and fine, who know woman to be just woman, that is to say, neither a doll of clay made to serve for our pastime, nor a transcendental melody to be evoked at our master touch. They reject us, because we have neither the forceful delusions of the flesh, nor the roseate illusions of fancy: we can neither break them on the wheel of our desire, nor melt them in the glow of our fervour to be cast in the mould of our ideal.
- ↑ In the old days, when a girl had to choose between several suitors, she signified her choice by putting a garland round the neck of the accepted one.
