Ye gods! that a girl can
live to her age and know so little that is worth knowing! She
knows how to dress--that is, how to enhance her physical beauty;
and that, I admit, is a great deal. As far as it goes it is well.
But of the taste of a beautiful and, at the same time, intellectual
and highly cultivated woman, she has no conception; with her it is
a question of flesh and blood only."
"I wonder if it will ever be otherwise? I wonder if her marvellous
beauty, which is now like a budding rose, that partly conceals the
worm in its heart, will soon, like the overblown flower, reveal
so clearly what mars its life that scarcely anything else will be
noticed. What a fate for a man--to be tied for life to a woman
who will, with sure gradation, pass from at least outward beauty
to utter hideousness! Beauty, in a case like this, is but a mask
which time or the loathsome fingers of disease would surely strip
off; and then what an object would confront the disenchanted lover!
It would be like marrying a disguised death's-head. Never before
did I realize how essential is mental and moral culture to give
value to mere external beauty.
"And yet she seems to have a kind of quickness and aptness.
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