Nothing was difficult now--nothing would ever be hard again. To go where she was wanted, to give what she could that was needed, steadily to set self aside, asking for nothing but the opportunity to help, and through this high human service renewing the spent forces of her soul at the divine fountains that do not fail--this, indeed, was Love!
Oh, to make the others understand as she understood now--and as Alden understood! In her thought they two were as one. Groping through the same darkness, he had emerged, with her, into the same light; she felt it through the living, throbbing night more certainly than if they stood face to face in the blinding glare of the sun.
The heart-breaking tragedy of Woman revealed itself wholly to her for the first time. Less materialistic and more finely-grained than Man, she aspires toward things that are often out of his reach. Failing in her aspiration, confused by the effort to distinguish the false from the true, she blindly clutches at the counterfeit and so loses the genuine forever.
Longing, from the day of her birth for Love, she spends herself prodigally in the endless effort to find it, little guessing, sometimes, that it is not the most obvious thing Man has to offer. With colour and scent and silken sheen, she makes a lure of her body; with cunning artifice she makes temptation of her hands and face and weaves it with her hair. She flatters, pleads, cajoles; denies only that she may yield, sets free in order to summon back, and calls, so that when he has answered she may preserve a mystifying silence.
Her Estimate of Women
She affects a thousand arts that in her heart she despises, pretends to housewifery that she hates, forces herself to play tunes though she has no gift for music, and chatters glibly of independence when she has none at all.
In making herself "all things to all men," she loses her own individuality, and becomes no more than a harp which any passing hand may strike to quick response. To one man she is a sage, to another an incarnate temptation, to another a sensible, business-like person, to another a frothy bit of frivolity. To one man she is the guardian of his ideals, as Elaine in her high tower kept Launcelot's shield bright for him, to another she is what he very vaguely terms "a good fellow," with a discriminating taste in cigarettes and champagne.
Let Man ask what he will and Woman will give it, praying only that somewhere she will come upon Love. She adapts herself to him as water adapts itself to the shape of the vessel in which it is placed. She dare not assert herself or be herself, lest, in some way, she should lose her tentative grasp upon the counterfeit which largely takes the place of love. If he prefers it, she will expatiate upon her fondness for vaudeville and musical comedy until she herself begins to believe that she likes it. With tears in her eyes and her throat raw, she will choke upon the assertion that she likes the smell of smoke; she will assume passion when his slightest touch makes her shudder and turn cold.