No woman speaks aloud, but most women smile aloud.  And the fact that in so doing we unveil all our artifice, all the whirlpool of our inmost being to each other, proves the extraordinary solidarity of our sex.

When did one woman ever betray another?

This loyalty is not rooted in noble sentiment, but proceeds rather from the fear of betraying ourselves by revealing things that are the secret common property of all womanhood.

And yet, if a woman could be found willing to reveal her entire self?...

I have often thought of the possibility, and at the present moment I am not sure that she would not do our sex an infinite and eternal wrong.

We are compounded so strangely of good and bad, truth and falsehood, that it requires the most delicate touch to unravel the tangled skein of our natures and find the starting point.

No man is capable of the task.

During recent years it has become the fashion for notorious women to publish their reminiscences in the form of a diary.  But has any woman reader discovered in all this literature a single intimate feature, a single frank revelation of all that is kept hidden behind a thousand veils?

If indeed one of these unhappy women ventured to write a plain, unvarnished, but poignant, description of her inner life, where would she find a publisher daring enough to let his name appear on the cover of the book?

I once knew a man who, stirred by a good and noble impulse, and confident of his power, endeavoured to “save” a very young girl whom he had rescued from a house of ill-fame.  He took her home and treated her like a sister.  He lavished time and confidence upon her.  His pride at the transformation which took place in her passed all bounds.  The girl was as grateful as a mongrel and as modest as the bride in a romantic novel.  He then resolved to make her his wife.  But one fine day she vanished, leaving behind her a note containing these words:  “Many thanks for your kindness, but you bore me.”

During the whole time they had lived together, he had not grasped the faintest notion of the girl’s true nature; nor understood that to keep her contented it was not sufficient to treat her kindly, but that she required some equivalent for the odious excitements of the past.

* * * * *

All feminine confessions—­except those between relations which are generally commonplace and uninteresting—­assume a kind of beauty in my eyes; a warmth and solemnity that excuses the casting aside of all conventional barriers.

I remember one day—­a day of oppressive heat and the heavy perfume of roses—­when, with a party of women friends, we began to talk about tears.  At first no one ventured to speak quite sincerely; but one thing led to another until we were gradually caught in our own snares, and finally we each gave out something that we had hitherto kept concealed within us, as one locks up a deadly poison.