Are our steps dogged then, and all our proceedings watched by non-commissioned detectives, who enjoy the immense advantage of being born in every house, and furnished with a passport into every other? Is a badge concealed in every reticule, to be displayed when the occasion comes to arrest us, which may be at the moments of our critical feelings, when confidence, and not exposure, is vital to us? A fine woman has not the consciousness that belongs to spies: she is guiltless of the act and the intent to watch us. Men deliberately set themselves to the work of scrutiny, and pay out all the line they have to fathom an associate, and bring up his mud or gold-sand sticking to the sinker. It does not always reach the grounds of his being. But clear-headed women envelop other natures as the air which simply exists to drench all objects through their pores, by the stress of miles of heaven's blue piled on it. As every unconscious breath we draw compels the air to enter and circulate through us, so all our involuntary moods and actions invite the woman's perception. Who is not willing to exist immersed in this frank element that is without a motive?
But if some obscure caprice in a woman is always ready to steal out and nibble at her judgment, or if some obliquity faults her intrinsic nature, she can mistake you as rapidly as otherwise she might correctly hit. Nothing can be more unjust and cruel, more bitterly fostered, more viciously proclaimed, or virtuously insinuated, than the impromptu misinterpretations of a shallow or prejudiced woman. She may not be deep enough to be dangerous; but her prejudice saturates the mind, and there is no margin of a woman left. She plies her pea-blower in all companies: the little projectiles carry breath enough to tingle. They hit the people who ought to be your friends with a blow aimed by something that is unlike yourself, and which you are not capable of becoming. It is yourself soured in her spleen, poisoned by her spite. Some unsatisfied emotion degenerates into a damaged judgment.
If the instinct of womanhood be vitiated in a person of strong character, who insists upon being admired, and sweeps into her net all the adoration that is afloat, or if she is unsexed by any kind of mean ambition, her touch for man will be blunted. She will probably report his cutaneous defect, and overlook his spiritual substance. In treasuries and mints, the selection of women is made to count the coin, because by the mere handling they can detect and throw aside the light weights and the spurious metal. In the test to which women subject men, the hands must be unsophisticated, and the blood of a born lady, high or low, must feed the subtle finger-ends.