Deep down in his heart--and this was his own secret--he did not even despise women.

But he had seen their weaknesses and their frailties as perhaps no other man had ever seen them, and he had written of them as no other man had ever written.

This had brought him the condemnation of the host, the admiration of the few.

His own personal veneer of antagonism against woman was purely artificial, and yet only a few had guessed it.

He had built it up about him as a sort of protection.