In all love there is something perfectly and Paradisiacally pristine.
Would the most emancipated woman have love otherwise? At all events,
Perhaps the most womanly position a woman can occupy is: with her head on
her lover's heart. At this the strong-minded may scoff. They may.
* * *
The obsession of the male heart by one woman ousts from it all other
women. Thus,
The accepted young man regards all women but the one as he would regard
fashion-plates. To the young woman men continue to be men. That is to
say,
A man dives headlong into love. A woman paddles into it. And the
woman's hesitation at the brink of the stream exasperates the spluttering
man. In short,
A man's heart is captured wholly and at a stroke. A woman's heart
surrenders itself piecemeal.
Whereas, with a man, a trivial passion is usually an affair more of the
senses or of the imagination than of the heart; with a woman every
passions is an affair of the heart.
A man, when first he is in love, is absorbed in the contemplation of the
object of his love. A woman is similarly situated is capable of making
comparisons.
It gives to woman's curiosity a curious pleasure to compare the methods
of men's proposals.
In love, a woman is generally cool enough to calculate pros and cons; a
man, in similar plight, is incapable of anything but folly.
* * *
It is a feminine motto that a woman needs to be taught how to love.
Perhaps she does; but most men will think one private tutor ought to
suffice, and that tutor ought to be he. At all events,
The last schoolmaster would be apt to regard with somewhat mixed feelings
the tuition of previous crammers.
Why go to the trouble of explaining away a first love, if the second is
no whit its inferior? Unless it be to overcome.
What a second love chiefly deplores is: that it was not he (or she) who
first taught his (or her) loved one to love. Is it not true also that
It is the first love that amazes, that beautifies, that consecrates?
(An illicit love beautifies and consecrates nothing: