om the neck and arranged
elaborately on the crown. There is no fear of plagiary; he cannot have said
all; he cannot have said what I want to say.

Looking at this face so mundane, so intellectually mundane, I see why a
young man of refined mind--a bachelor who spends at least a pound a day on
his pleasures, and in whose library are found some few volumes of modern
poetry--seeks his ideal in a woman of thirty.

It is clear that, by the very essence of her being, the young girl may
evoke no ideal but that of home; and home is in his eyes the antithesis of
freedom, desire, aspiration. He longs for mystery, deep and endless, and he
is tempted with a foolish little illusion--white dresses, water colour
drawings, and popular music. He dreams of Pleasure, and he is offered Duty;
for do not think that that sylph-like waist does not suggest to him a yard
of apron string, cries of children, and that most odious word, "Papa." A
young man of refined mind can look through the glass of the years.

He has sat in the stalls, opera-glass in hand; he has met women of thirty
at balls, and has sat with them beneath shadowy curtains; he knows that the
world is full of beautiful women, all waiting to be loved and amused, the
circles of his immediate years are filled with feminine faces, they cluster
like flowers on this side and that, and they fade into garden-like spaces
of colour. How many may love him? The loveliest may one day smile upon his
knee! and shall he renounce all for that little creature who has just
finished singing, and is handing round cups of tea? Every bachelor
contemplating marriage says, "I shall have to give up all for one, one."

The young girl is often pretty but her prettiness is vague and uncertain,
it inspires a sort of pitying admiration, but it suggests nothing; the very
essence of the young girl's being is that she should have nothing to
suggest, therefore the beauty of the young face fails to touch the
imagination. No past lies hidden in those translucent eyes, no story of
hate, disappointment, or sin. Nor is there in nine hundred and ninety-nine
cases in a thousand any doubt that the hand, that spends at least a pound a
day in restaurants and cabs, will succeed in gathering the muslin flower if
he so wills it, and by doing so he will delight every one. Where, then, is
the struggle? where, then, is the triumph? Therefore, I say that if a young
man's heart is not set on children, and tiresome dinner parties, th