“Oh, maybe you won’t be so bad because you haven’t got as much vanity. Mine’s insatiable, I guess, and good old Mother Nature taught me the trick of covering it up with the don’t-care-a-damn air combined with the come-hither eye. That does the trick. And they get what hurt’s going. I don’t. You’ll cultivate men, thinking it’s your vanity waked up, or mere youth, or because it’s time to have a fling, but what you really are after is the one and only man. The Companion. The Sympathetic Soul. The Mate. All that rot. He don’t exist, kiddo. He’s the modern immaculate conception, and he’s generally stillborn; the bungling doctor being the plain unadulterated male inside of himself. You’ve got to be your own companion, and if you want happiness you can get it by expecting just nothing of men. Use them. Throw them on the ash heap. Pass on to the next. Quit sitting on the watch tower with your eyes trained on the horizon for the prince that is born and lives and dies in a woman’s imagination.” “I have seen happy--united couples--who had been married for years.” “Oh, yes; some couples are born to jog along together, and some wives are born man-tamers, and get a lot of satisfaction out of it. But you’re much too high-falutin’ for that. You’ll always dream of the impossible--not only in man but of what he’s got to give--which ain’t much. And I didn’t need all them--those--psychological and problem and worldly novels you made me read, translated from half a dozen languages, either. You take my advice, Ora, and don’t start off on any fool hunt for an ideal. Men are just matter-of-fact two-legged animals, and as selfish as a few thousand years of fool women have naturally made them. He does well while he’s courting because he’s naturally good at bluff. But every bit of romance oozes out of him after he’s eaten his first breakfast of ham and eggs at home. We can keep up the bluff forever. Men can’t. Each one of them’s got a kid twin brother inside that plays marbles till he dies and makes you feel older every day. No, sir! If I ever had any delusions, I’ve got over them good and plenty. And I thank the Lord,” she added piously. “I think that rather adorable, you know: the eternal boy. And I fancy it is all that saves men from becoming horrors; in this country, at least--when you consider the unending struggle, and strain, and sordid business of money getting. They use up all their bluff in the battle of life, poor things. Why shouldn’t they be natural with us?...”