Jane wondered if the equivalent man would pass the time for her.  She didn’t think so.  She thought she would get bored with never talking about anything interesting.  And it must, she thought, be pretty beastly having to kiss people who used cheap scent and painted their lips.  One would be afraid the red stuff would come off.  In fact, it surely would.  Didn’t men mind—­clean men, like Johnny?  Men are so different, thought Jane.  Johnny was the same at Oxford.  He would flirt with girls in tea-shops.  Jane had never wanted to flirt with the waiters in restaurants.  Men were perhaps less critical; or perhaps they wanted different qualities in those with whom they flirted; or perhaps it was that their amatory instinct, when pronounced at all, was much stronger than women’s, and flowed out on to any object at hand when they were in the mood.  Also, they certainly grew up earlier.  At Oxford and Cambridge girls weren’t, for the most part, grown-up enough to be thinking about that kind of thing at all.  It came on later, with most of them.  But men of that age were, quite a lot of them, mature enough to flirt with the girls in Buol’s.

Jane discussed it with Gideon one evening.  Gideon said, ’Men usually have, as a rule, more sex feeling than women, that’s all.  Naturally.  They need more, to carry them through all the business of making marriage proposals and keeping up homes, and so on.  Women often have very little.  That’s why they’re often better at friendship than men are.  A woman can be a man’s friend all their lives, but a man, in nine cases out of ten, will either get tired of it or want more.  Women have a tremendous gift for friendship.  Their friendships with other women are usually much more devoted and more faithful than a man’s with other men.  Most men, though of course not all, want sex in their lives at some time or other.  Hundreds of women are quite happy without it.  They’re quite often nearly sexless.  Very few men are that.’

Jane said, ’There are plenty of women like Clare, whom one can’t think of apart from sex.  No friendship would ever satisfy her.  If she isn’t a wife and mother she’ll be starved.  She’ll marry, of course.’

‘Yes,’ Gideon agreed.  ’There are plenty of women like that.  And when a woman is like that, she’s much more dependent on love and marriage than any man is, because she usually has fewer other things in her life.  But there are women also like Katherine.’

’Oh, Katherine.  K isn’t even dependent on friendship.  She only wants her work.  K isn’t typical.’

’No; she isn’t typical.  She isn’t a channel for the life force, like most of us.  She’s too independent; she won’t let herself be used in that way.’

‘Am I a channel for the life force?’ thought Jane.  ’I suppose so.  Hence Oliver and baby.  Is Arthur?  I suppose so.  Hence his wanting to marry me.’

2