ng hearts ache? What agony it is to _her_ when _he_ dances
three times running with that horrid, stuck-up London girl, with her
fashionable jargon, her languorous movements, just a turn or two, and
then stop for as many minutes! First love is not often last love. _He_
thinks _her_ unreasonable to mind those dances, yet when a great love
comes into her life, making her think of him as "just a boy," he suffers
all, or nearly all, the pangs of a great passion. Unavailing pain! _She_
has cast the die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with
the absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice. Much may
happen to the great love, but it is very real! A great love may merge
into matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may
pass through the world, loving faithfully, and without digression, to
the end. Or something may come between, and the great love may become
the unattainable! It will not be the less real for that.

[Sidenote: The Unattainable.]

The unattainable has more in it of pathos than despair. Romance sweetens
it, and the romance never dies. The tenderness of "what might have been"
gives balm to many a suffering soul! The wife may be unhappy, neglected,
heartsick, she may even loathe him whose name she bears, but she is
often upholden by the thought that _he_ would have been wholly
different! A husband may know that he has married the wrong woman, yet
he bears what is, because he cannot have _her_ who would have made life
all sunshine. Few pity the one-sided love, helpless, hopeless, and
without justification as it is; yet it is very real to the lonely soul.
The worn-out love is the very essence of sadness! It is heart-breaking
to watch the efforts of a foolish heart to keep a love dying or already
dead, to see love, which would once have made a paradise, poured out at
the feet of one who is only bored and not even touched by it. Nothing is
so dead as a dead love--yet, even _that_ is real!

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Miss May Crommelin takes a professional view]

Can any sensible novelist hesitate? Does a shoe-maker depreciate
leather? Would you saw off the tree-branch you sit on? Now, on this
subject, anybody's opinion (full-grown) is as good as another's. Let the
footman bring down word that love is the drawing-room topic, and the
cook will cry out, "What do they know more about it than _us_?" Is it
not a human feeling, call it instinct or no? Sur