Of course, in a great deal of this there is no harm.  People who like each other will like to please each other, to give pleasure, and to enjoy it together.  But there is something beyond this which is not harmless but detestable, and that is the deliberate playing on sexual attraction in order to extract homage and to demonstrate power.  A girl will sometimes play on a man as a pianist on his instrument, put a strain on him that is intolerable, fray his nerves and destroy his self-control, while she herself, protected not by virtue but frigidity, complacently affirms that she “can take care of herself.”  The blatant dishonesty of the business never strikes her for a moment.  She takes all she wants and gives nothing in return, and honestly believes that this is because she is “virtuous.”  That she is a thief—­and one who combines theft with torture—­never occurs to her; yet it is true.

Observe—­I do not suggest that it would be creditable if she did “pay.”  It would be no more so than Herod’s payment of John the Baptist’s head.  But although it is wrong to take something you want and give in return what you ought not to give, it would be a curious sort of morality that would go on to argue that it is right to take all and give nothing.  Both transactions are immoral and one is dishonest.

On the other hand, it must be remembered that a parasite must take all and give nothing or as little as possible.  That is the law of its being.  And so long as men resent the independence of women, and enjoy the position of perpetual paymaster, so long will many women be driven to use the only weapon they have left.  Moreover, it is fair to say—­and this is why I plead for light—­that many of them are genuinely ignorant that they are playing with fire.  The more frigid they are themselves, the less are they able to gauge the forces they are arousing; the more ignorant they are, the less possible is it for them to be chivalrous to those whose strength and weakness they alike misunderstand.  The half-knowledge, the instinctive arts, which girls sometimes display continually mislead men into thinking them a great deal cleverer than they are.  Each is ignorant of the other’s weakness, and each puts the other in danger because of that ignorance.

I once spoke to a big meeting of girls in the neighbourhood of a big camp, during the war; and reflecting on the difficult position of the men—­their segregation from ordinary feminine society, their distance from their homes, their unoccupied hours, and the inevitable nervous and emotional strain of preparing for the front—­I tried to make the girls realize how hard they could make it for the men to keep straight, if they were ignorant or foolish themselves.  I knew—­and said so—­that the girls were in a difficult position too; but, after all, they prided themselves on being the more “moral” (i.e. the stronger) sex, and should be chivalrous.