y crossed the danger-line
lying between friendship and love.

Therefore it may astonish you when I confess that, at the time you
temporarily lost your head, I was conscious of an undercurrent of
feminine vanity at the thought that I was capable of inspiring a young
and talented man with so sincere a feeling.

A similar experience with an older man would have suggested an insult,
since older men understand human nature, and realize what a flirtation
with a married woman means. But your ingenuousness, and your romantic,
boyish temperament, were, in a measure, an excuse for your folly, and
made me lenient toward you.

My happy life, my principles and ideals, submerged this sentiment of
feminine vanity to which I confess, but I knew it was there, and it led
me to much meditation, then and ever since, upon the matter of woman's
weakness and folly.

As never before, I was able to understand how a neglected or misused
wife might mistake this very sentiment of flattered vanity for the
recognition of an affinity.

Had I been suffering from coldness and indifference at home, how
acceptable your boyish devotion might have proved to me.

And how easily I would have been persuaded by your blind reasoning that
we were intended by an all-wise Providence for life companions.

There is no sin a woman so readily forgives as a man's unruly love for
her, and hundreds of noble-hearted women have been led to regard a
lawless infatuation as a divine emotion, because they were lonely, and
neglected, and hungry for affection.

See to it, my dear friend, as the years go by, that your wife needs no
romance from the outside world to embellish her life with sentiment.

Do not drop into the humdrum ways of many contented husbands, and forget
to pay the compliment, and cease to act the lover.

Notice the gowns and hats your wife wears, and share her pleasures and
interests when it is possible.

Not that you should always be together, for separate enjoyments and
occupations sometimes lend an added zest to life for husband and wife,
but do not drift apart in all your ideas and interests, as have so many
married people.

You are the husband of a bright and lovely girl, and if you forget this
fact after a time, remember there are other Ray Gilberts who may realize
it, and seek to awaken such an interest in her heart as you sought to
arouse in mine.

You found the room occupied by its rightful host.

See it that no man finds the room vac