aw has given a very amusing, and, in spite of itself,
convincing, picture of this manoeuvring in _Man and Superman_, where he
also expresses his conviction that 'men, to protect themselves . . .
have set up a feeble, romantic conviction that the initiative in sex
business must always come from the man . . . but the pretence is so
shallow, so unreal that even in the theatre, that last sanctuary of
unreality, it imposes only on the inexperienced. In Shakespeare's plays
the woman always takes the initiative. In his problem plays and his
popular plays alike the love interest is the interest of seeing the
woman hunt the man down. . . . The pretence that women do not take the
initiative is part of the farce. Why, the whole world is strewn with
snares, traps, gins, and pitfalls for the capture of men by women. It is
assumed that the woman must wait motionless to be wooed. Nay, she often
does wait motionless. That is how the spider waits for the fly. The
spider spins her web. And if the fly, like my hero, shows a strength
that promises to extricate him, how swiftly does she abandon her
pretence of passiveness, and openly fling coil after coil about him
until he is secured for ever!'

* * *

_The Marriage of Affection._--'Do you know any thoroughly happy
couples?' says one of the characters in _Double Harness_.

'Very hard to say. Oh, ecstasies aren't for this world, you know--not
permanent ecstasies. You might as well have permanent hysterics. And, as
you're aware, there are no marriages in heaven. So perhaps there's no
heaven in marriages either.'

These sentiments are of a nature to disgust and irritate the ignorant
girl of twenty by their callous unreality in her eyes, and to delight
the experienced woman of, say, thirty, by their profound truth in
hers--so utterly do one's ideas about life change in the course of ten
years or so!

Sixty years ago George Sand wrote: 'You ask me whether you will be happy
thro' love and marriage. You will not, I am fully convinced, be so in
either the one or the other. Love, fidelity, maternity are nevertheless
the most important, the most necessary things in the life of a woman.'

To the same effect writes R. L. Stevenson when he says: 'I suspect Love
is rather too violent a passion to make in all cases a good domestic
character.' Of course no very young people will believe this, but it is
a horrid sordid truth that, as a rule, the happiest marriages are those
in which the coupl