"It's not bosh. The idea that fellows like you have of women is enough to make one ill. You think they are tender, and self-sacrificing, and helpless and trustful and loving. Helpless! Good Lord. An ordinary modern girl is as well able to take care of herself among men as a Dreadnought among fishing smacks. She sidles along just turning her screw and then 'Bang, Bang!' she blows them all out of the water if she doesn't want them, and sucks them in if she does, and lets down a great grappling iron from her deck and hauls them on board. And when they are married they are supposed to be clinging and devoted and absorbed in their husbands and babies. Was there ever such a misconception? Why, supposing you find a block of women on the pavement opposite a shop, you may bet ten thousand to one that that shop is a dress-maker's, or a seller of women's clothes. They stand glued to the glass like flies on fly paper, thinking how sweet they would look in that eight guinea walking dress. And when they have to move away they walk with their heads still looking at the windows, stupefied and fascinated, still gazing at some dreadful white corset trimmed with lace, or open-work stockings. And they aren't thinking how ravished their silly Dick or Harry will be to see them in that new skirt, with the foolish open-work stockings peeping out below it, they are thinking how ravishing they will look when other women see them in it, and how greenly jealous other women will be. If they were thinking of their husbands, they would be imagining how ravishing darling Dick or Harry would look in that cheviot tweed. But not they!"
"Oh, put it all into one of your rotten plays," said Charles.
"Not I, thank you. The Dreadnoughts would blow me out of the water. But I'm saying it to you for your good. You trust people too much, men and women alike. You go smiling and wagging your tail like a puppy, thinking that everybody is going to be kind and tender and unselfish. Especially foolish is your view of women. You've got a sense of chivalry, and a man with a sense of chivalry always gets left. You're just as absurd about men too: you think people are nice to you, because they like you: it is very conceited of you----"