"Tell a woman she is perfect and she doubts you--sometimes. But tell a man that (one can in all sorts of ways), why, he only thinks it is his due--possibly he will think you are clever. Most men are stupid--I don't mean their working brains, their bread-and-butter brains, but their society brains. They swallow anything you tell them. They originate everything in this blessed world--but conversation.
"If a man converses he discourses and he improves your mind. Now you don't always want to have your mind improved! I don't say he doesn't know how to make love; but that doesn't count, for after all, making love is, often as not, silence _à deux_. So if he isn't improving your mind or making love he is stranded, and that is where we women come in.
"I don't want my mind improved at an afternoon tea, nor do I wish to be made love to over an uninspiring biscuit, and I should feel eternally disgraced if either of us looked bored; so I give him leading questions like sugar-plums, and while he nibbles away at each in turn till he has sucked it up, I have learnt to look at him with all my eyes--a kind of subdued rapture which I adjust according to the man, and then I detach my mind and consider what the clever stupid can talk about next.
"It isn't necessary to do anything but to smile, especially if you have nice teeth, as he does all the talking; but he'll think you are the cleverest woman going. Possibly you are, only he doesn't really know how clever you are! There are some women you have to treat in the same way, and they are either very distinguished and spoilt or they are very influential, or they have missions; but it's always a bore, and unless you are 'on the make'--a very ill-bred expression, I think--it's tiresome and doesn't pay. I don't mind being bored for the sake of a man, but I really won't be bored for the sake of a woman.
"But, my dear, it is very fatiguing at best, and no wonder the women crowd into retreats and nervine asylums. It isn't the pace that kills, but the unearthly dulness. After I have talked to half a dozen men for whom I make conversation I go home to bed, and the vitality I have left wouldn't be enough for an able-bodied worm.
"Do I ever find a man who is interested in me if he is not in love with me? Never! If he is in love with me; yes! That's another story. Then everything about me interests him, but, perhaps, even then only because I am his temporary ideal. I daresay it's only another form of selfishness, bless him! The stupidity of men! That's the reason they are so fatuous; they don't understand!