Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/77



was not one of the women who are born possessed of a demon of coquetry. The mere suffering which a man undergoes at the hands of a coquette is not in its first effects so greatly to be deprecated. It is in the consequences that lies the deepest wrong which the insincere woman does to the man who loves her. For the distrust of her whole sex which grows upon him, and the conviction that neither she nor her kind are worthy of the best that is in his nature, she is responsible. The disdain which he may feel toward her cannot greatly injure him.

But the spirit in which he regards that tendency in his nature which looks to woman for the truest support of his life, and the