rranged themselves to form the thing we love.
And we marry our human ideal, expecting the unbroken continuance of that
harmony. But the discord comes; colours clash; the jarring note spoils
the chord; the idol once accepted as of gold and precious stones, proves
to be only common clay, thinly gilt. The diamonds are paste; the pearls
are beads of glass filled with shining fishes' scales; and the love
which we thought would be a practical reality for life, is nothing but a
pleasing fiction, good for its day, and now dead and done with. The
lover sees nothing as it is. Life is distorted between jealousy and
admiration, and the plain teaching of common-sense is as little
understood as the conditions of the fourth dimension or the poetic
aspirations of the Simian tongue. The adored is not a real person; the
happiness anticipated is not practical nor practicable. Both are on
all-fours with the substantiality of a cloud and the serviceable roadway
of a rainbow. Custom, familiarity, daily habits are the sole tests by
which the reality of the thing beloved can be tried--the reality of the
thing beloved and consequent validity of love. Before these tests are
applied, the whole affair is as a fairy dream born of the perfume and
the mystery of night. With the clear cold breath of morning the dream
vanishes, but--what is left? The sigh of the vanishing god?--a tear on
the cheek of Psyche?--the loathing of the man who finds Melusine a
serpent rather than a woman?--or the peaceful joy of the child who
dreams of angels and wakes in its mother's arms?--of those who sleeping
on the ocean wake to find themselves safe in port?

* * * * *

[Sidenote: "Rita" thinks Love is beautiful and wise.]

At one period of life, love is simply an emotion--the outcome of
attraction, or the effect of that vague mystery which surrounds sex. In
this emotional stage the _feeling_ may be real enough, but the passion
is an illusion. A girl is often more in love with Love than with an
actual lover. The youth who beholds his ideal in the First Woman is in
love with the woman herself who for the time (usually very brief)
embodies that ideal. But to the girl and the youth comes an hour when
they are humiliatingly conscious of study wasted on a prettily-bound
work of fiction that for all use and purpose in life is quite valueless.
The edifice of romance is constructed much on the same plan as a child's
castle of cards, and deservedl