For women, right from the day they went to their first party, always hoped too much: how many dances, seemingly successful, had been grim failures covered over with a smile; how many invitations accepted became invitations regretted; how many plans and dreams had become stupidities; how much pretence that all was well, when it wasn't? We are too personal, she thought, in the way we interpret a look, a tone of voice, a smile. How lucky to be a man and never pay attention to the little things; how fortunate to take people as they are, and not to suffer from taking them as you would like them to be. How terrible to be a woman, to feel the difference between the dream and the reality, and yet to keep dreaming in spite of reality.