Altogether, a chastening encounter; and
my memory of it was tinged with a feeble resentment. How she had
scored! No man likes to be worsted in argument by a woman. And I fancy
that to be vanquished by a feminine writer is the kind of defeat least
of all agreeable to a man who writes. A `sex war,' we are often told
is to be one of the features of the world's future--women demanding
the right to do men's work, and men refusing, resisting, counter-
attacking. It seems likely enough. One can believe anything of the
world's future. Yet one conceives that not all men, if this particular
evil come to pass, will stand packed shoulder to shoulder against all
women. One does not feel that the dockers will be very bitter against
such women as want to be miners, or the plumbers frown much upon the
would-be steeple-jills. I myself have never had my sense of fitness
jarred, nor a spark of animosity roused in me, by a woman practising
any of the fine arts--except the art of writing. That she should write
a few little poems or pense'es, or some impressions of a trip in a
dahabieh as far as (say) Biskra, or even a short story or two, seems
to me not wholly amiss, even though she do such things for
publication. But that she should be an habitual, professional author,
with a passion for her art, and a fountain-pen and an agent, and sums
down in advance of royalties on sales in Canada and Australia, and a
profound knowledge of human character, and an essentially sane
outlook, is somehow incongruous with my notions--my mistaken notions,
if you will--of what she ought to be.
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