Men were perpetually striving, by ways the most methodical, the most subtle, the most far-reaching, to achieve a result in women, which, when achieved, men themselves viewed with dismay.

They may be said to be moved in this sphere by two passions, the passion for virtue and the passion for vice.

But it so happens that both these streams of passion have to be directed at the same fascinating object: Woman.

No doubt nothing is more admirable than the skill with which women have acquired the duplicity necessary to play the two contradictory parts thus imposed upon them.

But in that requirement the play of their natural reactions tended to become paralysed, and the delicate mechanism of their instincts often disturbed.