The women's rougher, simpler,
more upright judgment, embraces the whole truth, which their tact, their
mistrust of masculine idealism, ever prevents them from speaking in its
entirety. And their tact is unerring. We could not stand women speaking
the truth. We could not bear it. It would cause infinite misery and
bring about most awful disturbances in this rather mediocre, but still
idealistic fool's paradise in which each of us lives his own little
life--the unit in the great sum of existence. And they know it. They
are merciful. This generalization does not apply exactly to Mrs. Fyne's
outburst of sincerity in a matter in which neither my affections nor my
vanity were engaged. That's why, may be, she ventured so far. For a
woman she chose to be as open as the day with me. There was not only the
form but almost the whole substance of her thought in what she said. She
believed she could risk it. She had reasoned somewhat in this way;
there's a man, possessing a certain amount of sagacity . . . "
Marlow paused with a whimsical look at me. The last few words he had
spoken with the cigar in his teeth.
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