. She was required to play
incessantly on the first reclaiming chord which led our ancestral satyr to the
measures of the dance, the threading of the maze, and the setting conformably to
his partner before it was accorded to him to spin her with both hands and a
chirrup of his frisky heels. To keep him in awe and hold him enchained, there
are things she must never do, dare never say, must not think. She must be
cloistral. Now, strange and awful though it be to hear, women perceive this
requirement of them in the spirit of the man; they perceive, too, and it may be
gratefully, that they address their performances less to the taming of the green
and prankish monsieur of the forest than to the pacification of a voracious
æsthetic gluttony, craving them insatiably, through all the tenses, with shrieks
of the lamentable letter I for their purity. Whether they see that it has its
foundation in the sensual, and distinguish the ultra-refined but lineally
great-grandson of the Hoof in this vast and dainty exacting appetite is
uncertain. They probably do not; the more the damage; for in the appeasement of
the glutton they have to practise much simulation; they are in their way losers
like their ancient mothers. It is the palpable and material of them still which
they are tempted to flourish, wherewith to invite and allay pursuit: a condition
under which the spiritual, wherein their hope lies, languishes. The capaciously
strong in soul among women will ultimately detect an infinite grossness in the
demand for purity infinite, spotless bloom. Earlier or later they see they have
been victims of the singular Egoist, have worn a mask of ignorance to be named
innocent, have turned themselves into market produce for his delight, and have
really abandoned the commodity in ministering to the lust for it, suffered
themselves to be dragged ages back in playing upon the fleshly innocence of
happy accident to gratify his jealous greed of possession, when it should have
been their task to set the soul above the fairest fortune, and the gift of
strength in women beyond ornamental whiteness. Are they not of a nature
warriors, like men? - men's mates to bear them heroes instead of puppets? But
the devouring male Egoist prefers them as inanimate overwrought polished
pure-metal precious vessels, fresh from the hands of the artificer, for him to
walk away with hugging, call all his own, drink of, and fill and drink of, and
forget that he stole them.
    This running off on a by-road is no deviation from Sir Willoughby Patterne
and Miss Clara Middleton.
