many a really pure lad attempts to appear a blase roue. It is even true that those who are modest are ashamed of the feeling; but there is another, the modern form of shame—not the eroticisms shame, but the shame of the woman who has no lover, who has not received appraisement from the opposite sex. Hence it comes that men make it their business to tell each other what a right and proper pleasure they take in "doing their duty" by the opposite sex. And women are careful to let it be known that only what is "manly" in man can appeal to them: and man takes their measure of his manliness and makes it his own. Man's qualifications as a male have, in fact, become identical with his value with women, in women's eyes.
But God forbid that it should be so; that would mean that there are no longer any men.
Contrast with this the fact that the high value set on women's virtue originated with man, and will always come from men worthy of the name; it is the projection of man's own ideal of spotless purity on the object of his love.
But there should be no mistaking this true chastity for the shivering and shaking before contact, which is soon changed for delighted acquiescence, nor for the hysterical suppression of sexual desires. The outward endeavour to correspond to man's demand for physical purity must not be taken for anything but a fear lest the buyer will fight shy of the bargain; least of all the care which women so often take to choose only the man who can give them most value must not deceive any one (it has been called the "high value" or "self-respect" a girl has for herself)! If one remembers the view women take of virginity, there can be very little doubt that woman's one end is the bringing about of universal pairing as the only means by which they acquire a real existence; that women desire pairing, and nothing else, even if they personally appear to be as uninterested as possible in sensual matters. All this can be fully proved from the generality of the match-making instinct.
