I can think of only one answer to the enigma, and I hope it isn't the right one. I suspect that men of abundant manliness, like Lord Ruddington and Gibson, instinctively seek for their opposites in the shape of some passive, clinging femininity like Susan's. They demand that the woman shall be pretty as well as clinging and passive and feminine; because they know that they are brave, and that the brave deserve the fair, I suspect that these strong characters find sweet repose in a simple woman's characterlessness. Their eager spirits recuperate in her placidity.
Conversely, a flabbier man rejoices in a strenuous, all-alive woman. Take poor Alice. She is taller than I am; stronger, quicker, harder, more self-willed. And I suppose that is why Hugh, in his humdrum way, adores her, and is wretched when she's away, like a faithful hound.
If this be the sound theory, I shall never marry. How could I endure a man weaker and pettier than myself? And yet the only kind of man I could ever want ... won't ever want me!
I wish I hadn't begun to think these thoughts. Still more do I wish I hadn't made them become clearer by writing them down. It makes the world seem so mean and lean. There ought to be grander men than Ruddington--men who would spurn honeyed sloth with dolls like Susan--men who would exult at the challenge of a proud, high-spirited woman as climbers exult at the white blaze of the Jungfrau, as hunters exult at the roaring of a desert lion, as soldiers exult at the sight of a strong city set on a hill. But, alas for this shrunken, sluggish, poverty-stricken time, when I, poor I, who am so far short of being a heroine, must begin to regard myself as a Brynhild doomed to virgin sleep because the Siegfrieds are all too timid and too puny to leap through the small fires of my will and my pride.
These worries have been too much for my nerves. I feel all overstrung, as if a little thing would make me break down and cry.
For example, just now I went into Susan's room to make sure that she had taken me out of her frame. I find that, instead of taking me out, she's left me in, and taken out Ruddington. There I am, staring across the hinges at an empty oval.
Last time I saw the frame it had both of us in it, and Susan's room was warm and brilliant with floods of morning sunshine. But, just now, her room was chill and dim. The paper background of the empty oval showed up ghostly white.