ines of being like men is chiefly, it wo appear, to be more so. They will not go h way, but three quarters. The old-fashio man sometimes relented. The new-fashio woman makes quick work of her lover's vir There is hardly a villain in an old play would have let the lady off, if she had plea with him as Capes pleads with Ann Veron The qualms, the scruples, the regrets, are the man's: the girl refuses utterly to indulg anything so weak. Capes is unfortunate eno to say something to Ann Veronica about hor "Only your queer code of honor-Hon Once you begin with love you have to se through." Away with inhibitions! "But," some one will object, "all this been said before. And literature is full women who prey passionately on the men t say they love. They are a recognized typ Granted; but until now, the passionate prey and the unsought soliciting have not been d by the young unmarried girl of respecta traditions. The type is represented, from P phar's wife down, by the woman who is is that they really are not, for like Ann Veronica and Hilda ends do not object to Ann and we are afraid that, if we do 11 think that we are like that. them because we are told that 1, healthy-minded young women perfectly respectable lives on least, of gentility; and because normal, healthy-minded young ave lived such lives do not ap-st love affairs in the temper of If you wish to say that the nerely discussing pathological to some extent be letting them vill not thank you for it. What ar is that they believe girls of nty are like that. The last thing -, evidently, is that these young y attention from physicians or think-God save the mark!— described, in each case, a really [124] old-fashioned r Perhaps the old-fashioned novelists would have had believe. Let us rail, by all means, at the "vei virginal doll." Let us disagree with Tols (it is always good to disagree with Tolsto when he says, in the Sonate de Kreutz "une jeune fille pure ne veut pas un ama elle veut des enfants." Let us admit that modern girl really is frank with herself ab her desire to marry the man she has chos Indeed, I cannot think who will deny it. I there our respect for realism bids us stop. is a complex and misty matter, this probing the young girl's secret attitude to life and lover. Perhaps the greatest blunder of the n realists is that they do not see how comp and misty it is. The whole question is alm impossible of discussion, it is so difficult a delicate. Record the images in the girl's mi if you must that is the exhaustive, exhaust rule of realism. But for God's sake, rec them as vague, since vague they are! Th authors fail, precisely because they must, the girl's mind. Under their you will get somewhere; but it address you gave them. come to instances. Luckily for n, the frank young feminine e of a few sentimental aberraury ago, in the great English n. (What the new novelists one might remark, is more like g thing crossed with the highone need be more explicit than ng possession of the man she Juliet does not find her passion ming itself up in Ann Veronkiss her idol's feet because she y must have the firm texture of is she overpowered at every , by his "faint, exciting, mascud, surely, if any one were to plicit heroine, it would be the ic lovers have always prayed since, Sir Thomas Browne said, re not satisfied with embraces, truly each other; which, being [126] or of life for That is not c being misrepres resent their pr perhaps, of the The visions of of inexperience frank young th not wrap her vagueness. She vistic shiver; mensely like t about her; but herself to imag processes of in her with. She physical perfec his "points," a drawing an Chaucer's feel confound Emil it is something a That is not our quarrel with these misrep sented heroines. Our quarrel with them is th being misrepresented themselves, they misr resent their prototypes. It is a matter chief perhaps, of the actual content of their min. The visions of experience are not the visio of inexperience; moreover, there is not o frank young thing in ten thousand who do not wrap her ardor in a blessed cloak vagueness. She may laugh at her faint a vistic shiver; but she feels it. She may mensely like the feeling of her lover's ar about her; but she does not instinctively herself to imagining details that only the sl processes of intimacy will normally familiar her with. She may glory in his total effect physical perfection; but she does not go ov his "points," as if she were buying a horse, drawing an athlete in a life-class. Imag Chaucer's feelings, if any one had tried confound Emilye with the Wife of Bath! Y it is something very like that which Mr. B |