oul and faith and breath to a man--O, I shudder to
think of seeing that morning-glow fade into the light of common day. It
is such women as I who break their hearts; not your sentimental miss
who goes puling about, prating love and religion, and confiding in her
pastor. I have laughed long at what I call sentiment, but I am more
sentimental than the sentimentalist. I own the awful power of one soul
over its opposite; but it is a power to which I will not give way. Now,
in plain words, what should be the outcome of love? Marriage. And
marriage; what of that? It is a welding of two souls, say you, before
an altar where a sacred fire is ever after to be kept burning.
According to my idea, gathered from observation, it is a business
partnership gilded by certain pretty fictions which no one pretends to
observe. For six months, a year, five years, the husband worships his
wife with an ideality which ought to turn beggar-maids to queens and
queens to angels. Then, plainly, he gets used to her. She is a very
good woman, but her like has been seen before, and may be again. His
nature has a dozen sides to be satisfied; he is ambitious, he loves
art, or money, or his dirty fellow-men. All very well, you say; without
such bent, souls would be cramped and torpid. Ah, but meantime the
altar-fire dies down! If she loves him truly,--

"And if, ah woe! she loves alone,"

she tends it with her poor, weak hands; but no longer are the
ministrants two. The little observances of love are forgotten, or they
degenerate into a meaningless form more pitiful than silence. You
grant, I suppose, that there is a higher life to be sought, one of
aspiration, or holy companionship in great deeds and truer speech,--but
as I live by bread, I doubt whether husbands and wives can keep that
track together. You are a young Galahad with Lancelot's heart. I
believe in you, I care mightily for you in a certain way; but you are a
man, and none of the weaknesses of mankind are foreign to you. I am a
woman, and, hard as my heart may be, it is made to be broken. Therefore
say no more to me about this foolish fever of your youth. Believe me,
it is a malady incident to the time. It will pass, in this present
form, sometime to be renewed. You will love other women, and one day
the unexpressive she will appear who has never once peeped into these
worldly text-books. Hand in hand, she and you will learn the lesson
together. It may be bitter, it may not. There are