The seriousness with which the man falls in love startles the girl.
The man demands so much; is so exacting' so peremptory; so unyielding; so
frightfully selfish; so terribly jealous of the slightest look or smile
or gesture bestowed upon any other than he, that the girl . . . . . .
well, the girl probably begins to think, either that the man is an
unreasonable brute, or that her girlish notions of love were somewhat
astray. Then one or two things happens: either the man goes off in a
huff; or the girl mends her ways.
* * *
The recurrence of a love is a great shock to love. Love thinks itself a
think unique, unalterable, supreme; a thing not made out of the flux and
change of earthly affairs, but heaven-born and descended from the skies;
that it should go and come seems to destroy the fundamental conception of
love.
* * *
The affianced man thinks he has won him the sweetest, the most sacrosanct
thing that ever trode God's earth outside of Eden: a bundle of blisses, a
compact little mass of exquisite mysteries, whose every tint and curve
and motion are to him sources of wonderment and delight; he is at once
humbled and exalted; he thanks high Heaven for the gift; for that comport
himself worthy of such gift; for that this wondrous and mysterious little
thing called "a woman" should of her own accord put herself in his arms,
to be by him and by him alone cherished and nurtured till death them do
part--this indeed gives the mail heart a very sobering, a very ennobling
thrill; for beneath the heaving breast he so passionately loves, behind
the eyes into the depths of which he so passionately looks, there stirs,
he knows, that ineffable, that indefinable thing, a woman's heart; and
that TO HIM has been committed the keeping of that heart--this rouses in
him the manly virtues as no other thing rouses them. Strong is the man
who can live up to these emotions; sage the woman who knows what she has
aroused.
* * *
The philanderer or the flirt--to whom love-making and love-taking have
been a pasttime--is appalled at the seriousness of love when real love
is offered him or her. For often enough
The philanderer or the flirt thinks compliments and cajolery the food of
love: in time they discover that love is a veritable sarcophagus!
* * *
Many an accepted lover (both masculine and feminine) tries to make up for
coldness of passion by warmness of affection: a subterfuge of dubious
efficacy. For though