Between the sexes 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 sexes 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.  Friendship between men is a very different thing.  Something honest and frank, from which consequently they withdraw without anger, mutual obligation, or fear.  Friendship 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 space, 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....”