ole nature is involved. She has never
learnt to say that she can give her body to one while remaining spiritually
faithful to another, and perhaps she never will learn. I at least suspect
so. She may be as fickle as a man, but it will be in a different way.

Of course, in all this I generalize very rashly from a very narrow
experience. My excuse is that these things must be discussed if we are ever
to generalize more safely, or to learn that we must not generalize at all.
And I have come to the conclusion that it is perhaps as possible to know
something of what is or is not true when one is unmarried as when one is
married. At least one escapes the snare into which so many married people
surprisingly fall, of generalizing from an experience which is not merely
as narrow as everyone's must be, but actually unique; which enables them to
pronounce with stupefying confidence that all men are as this man is; all
women as his wife; and all marriages as his marriage. When one has had the
honour of receiving the confidence of a succession of such prophets and
heard them pronounce in turn, but in an entirely different sense, upon
the difficulties or easinesses of sex-relationships, always with a full
assurance that they are right, not only in their own case but universally,
one begins to make a few tentative generalizations oneself in the hope that
they will at least provoke discussion and engender light.

X

"THE SIN OF THE BRIDEGROOM"

"A deathless bubble from the fresh lips blown
Of Cherubim at play about God's throne
Seemed her virginity. She dreamed alone
Dreams round and sparkling as some sea-washed stone.
Then an oaf saw and lusted at the sight.
They smashed the thing upon their wedding night."

_Dunch,
Susan Miles._

Something has been said by others of one of the most fruitful sources of
misunderstanding between men and women, where misunderstanding is likely to
have the most disastrous results--what has been called by Rosegger "the sin
of the bridegroom." Perhaps "sin" is a mistaken word. If irreparable harm
is often done on the wedding night, it is quite as much due to ignorance
as to cruelty. Nothing is more astonishing than the widespread ignorance of
men _and women_ of the fact that courtship is not a mere convention, or a
means of flattering the vanity of women, but a physiological necessity
if there is to be any difference at all between the union of lovers