How does it feel to be in love?
When a man loves a girl, he feels such an overwhelming _individual
preference_ for her that though she were a beggar-maid he would scorn
the offer to exchange her for an heiress, a princess, or the goddess
of beauty herself. To him she seems to have a monopoly of all the
feminine charms, and she therefore monopolizes his thoughts and
feelings to the exclusion of all other interests, and he longs not
only for her reciprocal affection but for a monopoly of it. "Does she
love me?" he asks himself a hundred times a day. "Sometimes she seems
to treat me with cold indifference--is that merely the instinctive
assertion of feminine _coyness_, or does she prefer another man?" The
pangs, the agony of _jealousy_ overcome him at this thought. He hopes
one moment, despairs the next, till his _moods_ become so _mixed_ that
he hardly knows whether he is happy or miserable. He, who is usually
so bold and self-confident, is humbled; feels utterly unworthy of her.
In his fancy she soars so far above all other women that calling her
an angel seems not a _hyperbole_, but a compliment to the angel.
Toward such a superior being the only proper attitude is _adoration_.
She is spotless as an angel, and his feelings toward her are as
_pure_, as free from coarse cravings, as if she were a goddess. How
royally _proud_ a man must feel at the thought of being preferred
above all mortals by this divine being! In _personal beauty_ had she
ever a peer? Since Venus left this planet, has such grace been seen?
In face of her, the strongest of all impulses--selfishness--is
annihilated. The lover is no longer "number one" to himself; his own
pleasures and comforts are ignored in the eager desire to please her,
to show her _gallant_ attentions. To save her from disaster or grief
he is ready to _sacrifice_ his life. His cordial _sympathy_ makes him
share all her joys and sorrows, and his _affection_ for her, though he
may have known her only a few days--nay, a few minutes--is as strong
and devoted as that of a mother for the child that is her own flesh
and blood.