Part 4 (1/2)

”If men suspected ...”

It may safely be said that on the whole surface of the globe not one man exists who really knows a woman.

They know us in the same way as the bees know the flowers; by the various perfumes they impart to the honey. No more.

How could it be otherwise? If a woman took infinite pains to reveal herself to a husband or a lover just as she really is, he would think she was suffering from some incurable mental disease.

A few of us indicate our true natures in hysterical outbreaks, fits of bitterness and suspicion; but this involuntary frankness is generally discounted by some subtle deceit.

Do men and women ever tell each other the truth? How often does that happen? More often than not, I think, they deal in half-lies, hiding this, embroidering that, fact.

Between the s.e.xes reigns an ineradicable hostility. It is concealed because life has to be lived, because it is easier and more convenient to keep it in the background; but it is always there, even in those supreme moments when the s.e.xes fulfil their highest destiny.

A woman who knows other women and understands them, could easily prove this in so many words; and every woman who heard her--provided they were alone--would confess she was right. But if a man should join in the conversation, both women would stamp truth underfoot as though it were a venomous reptile.

Men can be sincere both with themselves and others; but women cannot.

They are corrupted from birth. Later on, education, intercourse with other women and finally marriage, corrupt them still more.

A woman may love a man more than her own life; may sacrifice her time, her health, her existence to him. But if she is wholly a woman, she cannot give him her confidence.

She cannot, because she dares not.

In the same way a man--for a certain length of time--can love without measure. He can then be unlocked like a cabinet full of secret drawers and pigeonholes, of which we hold the keys. He discloses himself, his present and his past. A woman, even in the closest bonds of love, never reveals more of herself than reason demands.

Her modesty differs entirely from that of a male. She would rather be guilty of incest than reveal to a man the hidden thoughts which sometimes, without the least scruple, she will confide to another woman.

Friends.h.i.+p between men is a very different thing. Something honest and frank, from which consequently they withdraw without anger, mutual obligation, or fear. Friends.h.i.+p between women is a kind of masonic oath; the breaking of it a mutual crime. When two women friends quarrel, they generally continue to carry deadly weapons against each other, which they are only restrained from using by mutual fear.

There _are_ honest women. At least we believe there are. It is a necessary part of our belief. Who does not think well of mother or sister? But who _believes entirely_ in a mother or a sister? Absolutely and unconditionally? Who has never caught mother or sister in a falsehood or a subterfuge? Who has not sometimes seen in the heart of mother or sister, as by a lightning flash, an abyss which the profoundest love cannot bridge over?

Who has ever really understood his mother or sister?

The human being dwells and moves alone. Each woman dwells in her own planet formed of centrifugal fires enveloped in a thin crust of earth.

And as each star runs its eternal course through s.p.a.ce, isolated amid countless myriads of other stars, so each woman goes her solitary way through life.

It would be better for her if she walked barefoot over red-hot ploughshares, for the pain she would suffer would be slight indeed compared to that which she must feel when, with a smile on her lips, she leaves her own youth behind and enters the regions of despair we call ”growing old,” and ”old age....”

All this philosophizing is the result, no doubt, of having eaten halibut for lunch; it is a solid fish and difficult to digest.

Perhaps, too, having no company but Jeanne and Torp, I am reduced to my own aimless reflections.

Just as clothes exercise no influence on the majority of men, so their emotional life is not much affected by circ.u.mstances. With us women it is otherwise. We really _are_ different women according to the dresses we wear. We a.s.sume a personality in accord with our costume. We laugh, talk and act at the caprice of purely external circ.u.mstances.

Take for instance a woman who wants to confide in another. She will do it in quite a different way in broad daylight in a drawing-room than in her little ”den” in the gloaming, even if in both cases she happens to be quite alone with her confidante.

If some women are specially honoured as the recipients of many confidences from their own s.e.x, I am convinced they owe it more to physical than moral qualities. As there are some rooms of which the atmosphere is so cosey and inviting that we feel ourselves at home in them without a word of welcome, so we find certain women who seem to be endowed with such receptivity that they invite the confidences of others.

The history of smiles has never yet been written, simply because the few women capable of writing it would not betray their s.e.x. As to men, they are as ignorant on this point as on everything else which concerns women--not excepting love.