ere behind the scenes, wherever mischief
brews for mortal man. She comes down the ages, loaded with
accusations; and yet, somehow or other, they do not seem to have done
her much harm. And the reason is, that she possesses, in supreme
perfection, the art of disarming her antagonist, having been very
cunningly constructed by the Creator for that very purpose: she is
like a cork; she will not drown, under any flood of charges: she
floats, _quand meme_: (two words that she might very well take, like
the inimitable Sarah, for her motto:) so that, be as angry as you
please with her, you generally find yourself not only unable to
condemn her, but even ready to beg her pardon, and rather glad, on the
whole, to get it. It is a hopeless case. And all the more, because no
woman ever lived, bad or good, who could be got to understand what is
meant by "playing cricket": you cannot make her keep the rules in any
game: she plays to win, like a German, and invariably cheats, if she
can: international law counts, only as long as it is for and not
against her: if you find her out, and scold her, she pouts, and will
not play. And then, if, as is commonly the situation, you want her to
play, very badly, what are you to do? Yes, it is a hopeless case.

* * * * *

And yet, if we look into the matter with that stern impartiality which
its public importance demands, we may perceive, that though there is,
it must be candidly owned, an element of truth in the charges brought
against her, they are founded, for all that, largely on
misunderstanding. It is man himself, her accuser, who is very nearly
always to blame. His intelligence as compared with her own, is clumsy:
(it is the difference between the dog and the cat:) he does not
realise the unfathomable gulf that divides her nature from his own,
and for lack of imaginative tact, judging her by himself, he
enormously overestimates the part played by reason in her behaviour.
Hence when, as she is always doing, she lets him down, he breaks out,
(obtusely) into denunciation and reproach, taking it for granted, that
what she did, she did, deliberately. But that is his mistake. Women
never act by deliberation, least of all in their relations with men.
Reason has hardly anything to do with it. A woman is a weapon,
designed by the Creator, who generally knows what he is doing, to
fascinate the other sex: that is her essence and her _raison d'etre_:
the woman who does n