Widdowson, before his marriage, had never suspected the difficulty of understanding a woman; had he spoken his serious belief on that subject, it would have been found to represent the most primitive male conception of the feminine being.

Women were very like children; it was rather a task to amuse them and to keep them out of mischief.

Therefore the blessedness of household toil, in especial the blessedness of child-bearing and all that followed.

Intimacy with Monica had greatly affected his views, yet chiefly by disturbing them; no firmer ground offered itself to his threading when he perforce admitted that his former standpoint was every day assailed by some incontestable piece of evidence.

Woman had individual characters; that discovery, though not a very profound one, impressed him with the force of something arrived at by independent observation.