ow all. Aware of this, and
too wise to let us study them successfully, Nature pretty language
this is for you, Algy! I can do nothing but write nonsense. I am
sick of life. I feel choked. After a month, Paris is sweet
biscuit.

"I have sent you the order for the money. If it were two, or
twenty, thousand pounds, it would be the same to me.

"I swear to heaven that my lowest cynical ideas of women, and the
loathing with which their simply animal vagaries inspires a
thoughtful man, are distanced and made to seem a benevolent
criticism, by the actualities of my experience. I say that you
cannot put faith in a woman. Even now, I do not--it's against
reason--I do not believe that she--this Dahlia--means to go through
with it. She is trying me. I have told her that she was my wife.
Her self-respect--everything that keeps a woman's head up--must have
induced her to think so. Why, she is not a fool! How can she mean
to give herself to an ignorant country donkey? She does not: mark
me. For her, who is a really--I may say, the most refined nature I
have ever met, to affect this, and think of deceiving me, does not
do credit to her wits--and she is not without her share.

"I did once mean that she should be honourably allied to me. It's
comforting that the act is not the wife of the intention, or I
should now be yoked to a mere thing of the seasons and the hours--a
creature whose 'No' to-day is the 'Yes' of to-morrow. Women of this
cast are sure to end comfortably for themselves, they are so
obedient to the whips of Providence.

"But I tell you candidly, Algy, I believe she's pushing me, that she
may see how far I will let her go. I do not permit her to play at
this game with me." The difficulty is in teaching women that we are
not constituted as they are, and that we are wilfully earnest, while
they, who never can be so save under compulsion, carry it on with
us, expecting that at a certain crisis a curtain will drop, and we
shall take a deep breath, join hands, and exclaim, 'What an exciting
play!'--weeping luxuriously. The actualities of life must be
branded on their backs--you can't get their brains to apprehend
them.

"Poor things! they need pity. I am ready to confess I did not keep
my promise to her. I am very sorry she has been ill. Of course,
having no brains--nothing but sensations wherewith to combat e