ove or true jealousy as his excuse. After the engagement
the sense of monopoly and the consciousness of plighted troth enter
into the lover's feelings, and intruders are properly warded off with
indignation. In romantic jealousy the leading role is played by the
imagination; it loves to torture its victim by conjuring visions of
the beloved smiling on a rival, encircled by his arm, returning his
kisses. Everything feeds his suspicions; he is "dwelling in a
continual 'larum of jealousy." Oft his jealousy "shapes faults that
are not" and he taints his heart and brain with needless doubt. "Ten
thousand fears invented wild, ten thousand frantic views of horrid
rivals, hanging on the charms for which he melts in fondness, eat him
up." Such passion inflames love but corrodes the soul. In perfect
love, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, jealousy is
potential only, not actual.

IV. COYNESS

When a man is in love he wears his heart on his sleeve and feels eager
to have the beloved see how passionately it throbs for her. When a
girl is in love she tries to conceal her heart in the innermost
recesses of her bosom, lest the lover discover her feelings
prematurely. In other words, coyness is a trait of feminine love--the
only ingredient of that passion which is not, to some extent, common
to both sexes. "The cruel nymph well knows to feign, ... coy looks and
cold disdain," sang Gay; and "what value were there in the love of the
maiden, were it yielded without coy delay?" asks Scott.

'Tis ours to be forward and pushing;
'Tis yours to affect a disdain,

Lady Montagu makes a man say, and Richard Savage sings:

You love; yet from your lover's wish retire;
Doubt, yet discern; deny, and yet desire.
Such, Polly, are your sex--part truth, part fiction,
Some thought, much whim, and all a contradiction.

"Part truth, part fiction;" the girl romances regarding her feelings;
her romantic love is tinged with coyness. "She will rather die than
give any sign of affection," says Benedick of Beatrice; and in that
line Shakspere reveals one of the two essential traits of genuine
modern coyness--_dissemblance of feminine affection_.

Was coyness at all times an attribute of femininity, or is it an
artificial product of modern social conditions and culture? Is coyness
ever manifested apart from love, or does its presence prove the
presence of love? These two important questions are to be answered in
t