spected half of the
population. There are good reasons for that. These reasons are so
discoverable with a little reflection that it is not worth my while to
set them out for you. I will only mention this: that the part falling
to women's share being all "influence" has an air of occult and
mysterious action, something not altogether trustworthy like all natural
forces which, for us, work in the dark because of our imperfect
comprehension.

"If women were not a force of nature, blind in its strength and
capricious in its power, they would not be mistrusted. As it is one
can't help it. You will say that this force having been in the person
of Flora de Barral captured by Anthony ... Why yes. He had dealt with
her masterfully. But man has captured electricity too. It lights him
on his way, it warms his home, it will even cook his dinner for him--
very much like a woman. But what sort of conquest would you call it?
He knows nothing of it. He has got to be mighty careful what he is
about with his captive. And the greater the demand he makes on it in
the exultation of his pride the more likely it is to turn on him and
burn him to a cinder..."

"A far-fetched enough parallel," I observed coldly to Marlow. He had
returned to the armchair in the shadow of the bookcase. "But accepting
the meaning you have in your mind it reduces itself to the knowledge of
how to use it. And if you mean that this ravenous Anthony--"

"Ravenous is good," interrupted Marlow. "He was a-hungering and
a-thirsting for femininity to enter his life in a way no mere feminist
could have the slightest conception of. I reckon that this accounts for
much of Fyne's disgust with him. Good little Fyne. You have no idea
what infernal mischief he had worked during his call at the hotel. But
then who could have suspected Anthony of being a heroic creature. There
are several kinds of heroism and one of them at least is idiotic. It is
the one which wears the aspect of sublime delicacy. It is apparently
the one of which the son of the delicate poet was capable."

He certainly resembled his father, who, by the way, wore out two women
without any satisfaction to himself, because they did not come up to his
supra-refined standard of the delicacy which is so perceptible in his
verses. That's your poet. He demands too much from others. The
inarticulate son had set up a standard for himself with that need for
embodying in his conduct the dreams,