know? Of their
own husbands they will relate the most intimate love-secrets to other
women. Men never do this of their wives. Explain it. There is only one
way. In all things of love women are less delicate. It is their mistake.
It is the father and the mother of the commonplace, and it is the
commonplace, like a loathsome slug, that beslimes and destroys love.

"Be delicate, little wife-woman. Never be without your veil, without
many veils. Veil yourself in a thousand veils, all shimmering and
glittering with costly textures and precious jewels. Never let the last
veil be drawn. Against the morrow array yourself with more veils, ever
more veils, veils without end. Yet the many veils must not seem many.
Each veil must seem the only one between you and your hungry lover who
will have nothing less than all of you. Each time he must seem to get
all, to tear aside the last veil that hides you. He must think so. It
must not be so. Then there will be no satiety, for on the morrow he will
find another last veil that has escaped him.

"Remember, each veil must seem the last and only one. Always you must
seem to abandon all to his arms; always you must reserve more that on
the morrow and on all the morrows you may abandon. Of such is variety,
surprise, so that your man's pursuit will be everlasting, so that his
eyes will look to you for newness, and not to other women. It was the
freshness and the newness' of your beauty and you, the mystery of you,
that won your man. When a man has plucked and smelled all the sweetness
of a flower, he looks for other flowers. It is his queerness. You must
ever remain a flower almost plucked yet never plucked, stored with vats
of sweet unbroached though ever broached.

"Stupid women, and all are stupid, think the first winning of the man
the final victory. Then they settle down and grow fat, and state,
and dead, and heartbroken. Alas, they are so stupid. But you, little
infant-woman with your first victory, you must make your love-life an
unending chain of victories. Each day you must win your man again. And
when you have won the last victory, when you can find no more to win,
then ends love. Finis is written, and your man wanders in strange
gardens. Remember, love must be kept insatiable. It must have an
appetite knife-edged and never satisfied. You must feed your lover well,
ah, very well, most well; give, give, yet send him away hungry to come
back to you for more."

Mrs. Higgins stood up