felt the necessity of communicating these memoirs to her. I can still
see her fright, her despair, her bewilderment, when she had learned and
understood it. She was on the point of breaking the engagement. What a
lucky thing it would have been for both of us!"

Posdnicheff was silent for a moment, and then resumed:--

"After all, no! It is better that things happened as they did, better!"
he cried. "It was a good thing for me. Besides, it makes no difference.
I was saying that in these cases it is the poor young girls who are
deceived. As for the mothers, the mothers especially, informed by their
husbands, they know all, and, while pretending to believe in the purity
of the young man, they act as if they did not believe in it.

"They know what bait must be held out to people for themselves and their
daughters. We men sin through ignorance, and a determination not to
learn. As for the women, they know very well that the noblest and most
poetic love, as we call it, depends, not on moral qualities, but on the
physical intimacy, and also on the manner of doing the hair, and the
color and shape.

"Ask an experienced coquette, who has undertaken to seduce a man, which
she would prefer,--to be convicted, in presence of the man whom she is
engaged in conquering, of falsehood, perversity, cruelty, or to appear
before him in an ill-fitting dress, or a dress of an unbecoming color.
She will prefer the first alternative. She knows very well that we
simply lie when we talk of our elevated sentiments, that we seek only
the possession of her body, and that because of that we will forgive her
every sort of baseness, but will not forgive her a costume of an ugly
shade, without taste or fit.