to face with a damning choice, between the more or less
dishonourable wriggling of Deronda and the downright woodenness of
Vernon Whitford.

But the superiority of women is perpetually menaced; they do not sit
throned on infirmities like the old; they, are suitors as well as
sovereigns; their vanity is engaged, their affections are too apt to
follow; and hence much of the talk between the sexes degenerates into
something unworthy of the name. The desire to please, to shine with a
certain softness of lustre and to draw a fascinating picture of oneself,
banishes from conversation all that is sterling and most of what is
humorous. As soon as a strong current of mutual admiration begins to
flow, the human interest triumphs entirely over the intellectual, and
the commerce of words, consciously or not, becomes secondary to the
commercing of eyes. But even where this ridiculous danger is avoided,
and a man and woman converse equally and honestly, something in their
nature or their education falsifies the strain. An instinct prompts them
to agree; and where that is impossible, to agree to differ. Should they
neglect the warning, at the first suspicion of an argument, they find
themselves in different hemispheres. About any point of business or
conduct, any actual affair demanding settlement, a woman will speak and
listen, hear and answer arguments, not only with natural wisdom, but
with candour and logical honesty. But if the subject of debate be
something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse for talk, a logical Aunt
Sally, then may the male debater instantly abandon hope; he may employ
reason, adduce facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail
him nothing; what the woman said first, that (unless she has forgotten
it) she will repeat at the end. Hence, at the very junctures when a talk
between men grows brighter and quicker and begins to promise to bear
fruit, talk between the sexes is menaced with dissolution. The point of
difference, the point of interest, is evaded by the brilliant woman,
under a shower of irrelevant conversational rockets; it is bridged by
the discreet woman with a rustle of silk, as she passes smoothly forward
to the nearest point of safety. And this sort of prestidigitation,
juggling the dangerous topic out of sight until it can be reintroduced
with safety in an altered shape, is a piece of tactics among the true
drawing-room queens.

The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place; it is