Barry Pain

“ I made up my mind to be the Perfect Shelved Woman, simple, friendly, good-tempered, dignified. Now it is of no use to be as perfect as that unless you have some appreciative audience. So I made mamma see that what she really wanted was to go back to England, and take a house on the Thames for the summer.
It was a stereotyped river house, with a garden running down to the water's edge, where the boat-house was. Sometimes in the mornings I would go out in the punt, and go down one of the backwaters. That used to be very pleasant. One could lie at full length on the cushions and read. ”

“ Romer.
“Known him these last ten years.”
“He's a very cruel man, isn't he?”
“Obviously not. Why do you say so?”
“He's a vivisectionist and he ill-treats his horses.”
“He may be a vivisectionist, and he may occasionally find it necessary to make a horse remember which is the man and which is the horse. But that's nothing to do with it. Cruelty always shows itself in the eye or the mouth, or both. Does he look like a man who tortures animals?” ”

“ The Perfect Shelved Woman would have sent back a few words of friendly but decided refusal at once. Once more I deviated from the ideal. I considered the proposal very seriously; and the more I considered it the less certain I became that I should refuse him at all. Women like strength—strength of any kind—in men. ”

“ She is, as a rule, too sensitive, easily offended, rather disagreeable, rather selfish. Further, she either continuously points to the fact that she is on the Shelf, which is bad, or makes continual and in effective efforts to get off the Shelf, which is worse. ”

“ I walked back and burnt it, and wrote another which was sufficiently in accord with the character of the Perfect Shelved Woman. I sometimes think that it was a pity that I did not meet Dr. Romer until it was too late.
*******
So my married sister, Alice, regards me as a failure. Personally, I prefer my own failure to her success, but still I do not deny that it is a failure of a kind. It does not lead to the convent nor to suicide. One goes on living, gradually growing more uninteresting. ”