Read "The Crystal Cup" by Gertrude Atherton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Friendship between men may survive rivalry in love. Men have stood shoulder to shoulder through the centuries in the hard business of life, and the need of a strong abiding affection for one of their own understanding sex, is rooted in the depths of being and not to be lightly surrendered. There are instances where the woman has been sacrificed.
But there is always something artificial in the friendship of women. It is a harness lightly worn and has a faint suggestion of carnival about it. Flowers must bedeck the harness, flowers of propinquity, common interests, ambitions, tastes, mutualities of all kinds in their particular sphere. Above all, a dissimilar taste in men. Nature designed them for one purpose only, to carry on the race and guard it in childhood, and if Mind today laughs at her ingenuous plan, she has her subtle revenges. When the flowers wither the harness falls off.