I had another instance of her cleverness.
Generally the women I have known intimately showed a desire to tell me
their life. I do not blame them for it; it shows that they feel the
need to justify themselves in their own eyes and ours. We men do
not. Yet I never met a woman either so clever as not to overstep the
artistic proportions in her confession, or so sincere as not to tell
lies in order to justify herself. I call to witness all men who when
the occasion occurs may verify how wonderfully similar all these cases
of going astray are, and consequently how tedious. Laura, too, began
to talk about herself with a certain eager satisfaction, but only in
this respect did she follow the beaten track of other fallen angels.
In what she told me there was a certain posing for originality, but
she was certainly not posing as a victim. Knowing she had to deal with
a sceptic, she did not want to call forth a smile of incredulity. Her
sincerity was skirting upon the bold, almost the cynical, one
might say, were it not that to her it is a system of life in which
aestheticism has taken the place of ethics. She prefers simply a life
in the shape of an Apollo to that of humpbacked Pulcinello; that is
her philosophy. She had married Davis not so much for his wealth
as for the purpose of making her life as beautiful as lay in human
power,--beautiful not in the common meaning of the word, but in the
highest artistic sense.
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