This, m'dears, is one of the questions everlastingly asked by man, and woman's answer to it is a Mona Lisa smile, which may be interpreted as acquiescence or scorn--as you please.

There have been, of course, many women well known in history who have appeared to be taking all and giving nothing in return, who never hesitated to destroy ruthlessly whatever stood in the way of their ambition, were it for place, for power or for love. In order to remove an obstacle that stood in their path women--demmed ungallant as it seems to say it--have been known to sacrifice the lives or friends or lovers, even the honour of their country, without granting so much as a kiss in return. Women have show, in fact, that they can be more pitiless, more cruel than men, where their desires, their appetites or their ambition were concerned.

In the nature of things there must also have been millions of women, inconspicuous and unknown, who have acted at times with unbelievable selfishness. Women, perhaps, who have used all their arts of seduction to keep a lover at their side when honour and duty called to him to go; others who, in order to satisfy their own ambition, have tied husband or lover to their chariot wheel, and dragged him with them to heights of social or political attainments which were beyond his power to reach, with the result that a crash was inevitable, and the weak or foolish man was hurled down from those giddy heights and fell broken in heart and in spirit, unregretted, uncomforted by the very one who caused his downfall.

History has shown us many a Cleopatra in some such roles, and I know that everyone of you in your own walk of life, has known of cases less famous but equally tragic.

Nevertheless, in fairness to the sex, let it be said that selfishness in its true sense is not always the motive power that drives these unhappy women on. Cleopatra was not intentionally selfish when she kept Antony by her side, whilst the cold ambitious Octavius had time to conquer worlds in his stead. Mrs. Warren Harding, in acting as the motive force which drove a simple farmer to the helm of one of the greatest powers in the modern world, has always appealed to me as being more a tragedy herself than even the tragic figure of her husband. And, plain Mrs. Smith, who turns her husband from an easy-going, sporting Briton into a white-faced business robot, is herself more often than not a stricken statue of self-denial.

Mark, I do not say that these women are right; merely that they are not, in the true meaning of the word, selfish.

When the pagans would have it that Cupid was blind I think they made a mistake. It is not the little god who is blind; he distributes his precious shafts judiciously enough as a rule; but his arrow points often seem to have been dipped in a virulent poison, which has the power of depriving of their sight those who have been pierced by them. And women suffer from these attacks of blindness far more frequently and more completely than men.

Watch the girl who fears or hopes for her lover. Is she selfish? Let Destiny ask her to give her life for his and see then! For herself she cares nothing, but for him--for him she will be ready to sacrifice not only her life, but the rest of the world in a single blazing funeral pyre if it would but profit him. Love's poisoned shaft has blinded her indeed.

She thinks for him, acts for him, schemes for him, plunges into evil or good impersonally for him. She sees a prize--he must have it; she recognizes a goal--he must attain it. For love of him she dreams dreams, and in her love-blindness she is obsessed by the dreams and forces his weak humanity to an impossible task.

But make no mistake. The dreams are all for him. She is willing to stand in the background, fall out by the way; she is ready to become a mere stepping-stone to his success. It would be the divine height of unselfishness were it not the blind height of folly.

Woman has a longer vision than man, but she lacks his logical faculty for estimating obstacles. Woman will try and keep her lover by her side, knowing that they would be happy together even though his name be disgraced, or his country in sore need of him. But man, whose creed is different from hers, puts her second in his thoughts. 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more!' is his rule of life; he is selfish for his honour's sake, whilst she would sacrifice both her honour and his regard for her in order to keep him safely within the shelter of her arms.

It has been said that if we only had faith we could say to this mountain: 'Go hence!' and it would actually go. That is the creed of the woman who is in love. Her faith in her love is so great that, should she covet a throne for her lover and a mountain stood in his way she would try her best to move it. I always think that had St. Peter been a woman he would never have found himself sinking when he tried to walk so boldly upon the waves.

Sometimes the man also is of heroic mould and can follow the keenest flights of his chosen woman's vision and make them all come true. But such a man is rare; he is the real Fairy Prince for whom every woman pines. With a true woman as his guide and helpmate he can rise to heights supreme and when he has reached them you will find him listening to the plaudits of a wondering world, taking them all as his due, for the world, my friends, seldom sees or guesses that it was the woman who gave him all that he most needed--her help, her guidance, her sustaining love--so that he might attain his goal.

Is it not the charming contrariness in woman that makes her--demmed delicious, distracting creature that she is--dream so many uncomfortable dreams? Would woman not a million times rather be left alone in an Eden of her own creation, alone with the man she loved, no matter whether he were god or common clay, than be a dweller in a Paradise peopled and fashioned by the world outside?

That is the reason probably why most of them are glad when they find that their idol has feet of clay after all, and they can love him just as illogically and absolutely as their heart desires, with all his failings and his sins. It is heroic, this giving all for love, and women are so constituted that they actually like doing it; but a happy home, contentment and family life are really worth a thousand times more than dreams of ambition, so few of which are satisfying even when they are attained.