nt, embraces the whole truth, which their tact, their
mistrust of masculine idealism, ever prevents them from speaking in its
entirety. And their tact is unerring. We could not stand women speaking
the truth. We could not bear it. It would cause infinite misery and
bring about most awful disturbances in this rather mediocre, but still
idealistic fool's paradise in which each of us lives his own little
life--the unit in the great sum of existence. And they know it. They
are merciful. This generalization does not apply exactly to Mrs. Fyne's
outburst of sincerity in a matter in which neither my affections nor my
vanity were engaged. That's why, may be, she ventured so far. For a
woman she chose to be as open as the day with me. There was not only the
form but almost the whole substance of her thought in what she said. She
believed she could risk it. She had reasoned somewhat in this way;
there's a man, possessing a certain amount of sagacity . . . "

Marlow paused with a whimsical look at me. The last few words he had
spoken with the cigar in his teeth. He took it out now by an ample
movement of his arm and blew a thin cloud.

"You smile? It would have been more kind to spare my blushes. But as a
matter of fact I need not blush. This is not vanity; it is analysis.
We'll let sagacity stand. But we must also note what sagacity in this
connection stands for. When you see this you shall see also that there
was nothing in it to alarm my modesty. I don't think Mrs. Fyne credited
me with the possession of wisdom tempered by common sense. And had I had
the wisdom of the Seven Sages of Antiquity, she would not have been moved
to confidence or admiration. The secret scorn of women for the capacity
to consider judiciously and to express profoundly a meditated conclusion
is unbounded. They have no use for these lofty exercises which they look
upon as a sort of purely masculine game--game meaning a respectable
occupation devised to kill time in this man-arranged life which must be
got through somehow. What women's acuteness really respects are the
inept "ideas" and the sheeplike impulses by which our actions and
opinions are determined in matters of real importance. For if women are
not rational they are indeed acute. Even Mrs. Fyne was acute. The good
woman was making up to her husband's chess-player simply because she had
scented in him that small portion of 'femininity,' that drop of superior
essence of w