"But?"
"I am not altogether unfamiliar with the sex--for I have known a
great number--in books."
"Our blacksmith," said Charmian, addressing the moon again, "has
known many women--in books! His knowledge is, therefore,
profound!" and she laughed.
"May I ask why you laugh at me?"
"Oh!" said she, "don't you know that women in books and women out
of books are no more the same than day and night, or summer and
winter?"
"And yet there are thousands of women who exist for us in books
only, Laura, Beatrice, Trojan Helen, Aspasia, the glorious
Phryne, and hosts of others," I demurred.
"Yes; but they exist for us only as their historians permit them,
as their biographers saw, or imagined them. Would Petrarch ever
have permitted Laura to do an ungracious act, or anything which,
to his masculine understanding, seemed unfeminine; and would
Dante have mentioned it had Beatrice been guilty of one? A man
can no more understand a woman from the reading of books than he
can learn Latin or Greek from staring at the sky."
"Of that," said I, shaking my head, "of that I am not so sure."
"Then--personally--you know very little concerning women?" she
inquired.
"I have always been too busy," said I. Here Charmian turned to
look at me again.
"Too busy?" she repeated, as though she had not heard aright;
"too busy?"
"Much too busy!" Now, when I said this, she laughed, and then
she frowned, and then she laughed again.
"You would much rather make a--horseshoe than talk with a woman,
perhaps?"
"Yes, I think I would."
"Oh!" said Charmian, frowning again, but this time she did not
look at me.
"You see," I explained, turning my empty pipe over and over,
rather aimlessly, "when I make a horseshoe I take a piece of
iron and, having heated it, I bend and shape it, and with
every hammer-stroke I see it growing into what I would have
it--I am sure of it, from start to finish; now, with a woman
it is--different."
"You mean that you cannot bend, and shape her, like your
horseshoe?" still without looking towards me.
"I mean that--that I fear I should never be quite sure of a
--woman, as I am of my horseshoe."
"Why, you see," said Charmian, beginning to braid the tress of
hair, "a woman cannot, at any time, be said to resemble a
horseshoe--very much, can she?"