... But--no! She was
really honest.
"We drifted here as we are doing now. She pulled at the sweet rushes
and crushed them in her hand. She adds a remembered brightness to this
afternoon.
"Honest. Friendly. Of all the women I have known, this woman who was
here with me came nearest to being my friend. You know, what we call
virtue in a woman is a tremendous handicap to any real friendliness with
a man. Until she gets to an age when virtue and fidelity are no longer
urgent practical concerns, a good woman, by the very definition of
feminine goodness, isn't truly herself. Over a vast extent of her being
she is RESERVED. She suppresses a vast amount of her being, holds back,
denies, hides. On the other hand, there is a frankness and honesty in
openly bad women arising out of the admitted fact that they are bad,
that they hide no treasure from you, they have no peculiarly precious
and delicious secrets to keep, and no poverty to conceal. Intellectually
they seem to be more manly and vigorous because they are, as people say,
unsexed. Many old women, thoroughly respectable old women, have the
same quality. Because they have gone out of the personal sex business.
Haven't you found that?"
"I have never," said the doctor, "known what you call an openly bad
woman,--at least, at all intimately.
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