But even though his obsession for dispelling illusions, which made him pull at her eyelashes to see if they were real, which made him open jars and bottles in the bathroom to see what they contained, even though he always had the feeling that women resorted to tricks and contrived spells which man must watch out for, he still felt that she was more than a woman, and that given the right moment, she was willing to shed the veils, the elusiveness, and to be completely honest.

It was not her clarity either, which he called honesty. Her clarity he distrusted. She always made wonderful patterns—he admitted that. There was a kind of Grecian symmetry to her movements, her life, and her words. They looked convincingly harmonious, clear—too clear. And in the meanwhile where was she? Not on the clear orderly surface of her ideas any longer, but submerged, sunk in some obscure realm like a submarine. She had only appeared to give you all her thoughts. She had only seemed to empty herself in this clarity. She gave you a neat pattern and then slipped out of it herself and laughed at you. Or else she gave you a neat pattern and then slipped out of it herself and then the utterly tragic expression of her face testified to some other realm she had entered and not allowed one to follow her into, a realm of despair even, a realm of anguish, which was only betrayed by her eyes.

What was the mystery of woman? Only this obstinacy in concealing themselves—merely this persistence in creating mysteries, as if the exposure of her thoughts and feelings were gifts reserved for love and intimacy.

He suspected that some day an honest woman would clear all this away. He never suspected for a moment that this mystery was a part of themselves they did not know, could not see.

Djuna, he ruminated, was a more ornamented woman, but an honest one.