she replied. "By love I mean the
spiritual, ideal, romantic passion that is hopeless."

"Yes," I replied, "but does not the idea of inaccessibility create a
worthless desire, that is, a desire for something that is forbidden or
unattainable? The majority of men, I think, will prefer an every-day
love with all its risks and imperfections to the shadowy ghost of a
hopeless love. The hopeful love does no violence to nature such as is
contemplated by the hopeless sentiment."

"You hardly understand me," said she; "the pleasure we aspire to is
superior to any physical delight, and is an end in itself. It is
romantic love, that blooms like a single flower in the crevices of a
volcano. It is the quintessence of existence, the rarest wine of life,
the expressed sweetness of difficulty and repression and
long-suffering, the choicest holiday of the soul. We are willing to
pay the price of hopelessness to taste such nectar. In the every-day
world such joy only rarely exists. Interest, indulgence, ambition,
fortune, time, temper and marriage destroy it. Youth, captivated by a
beautiful face or a winning smile, thinks it has discovered its true
counterpart, and so takes possession of the prize. It finds afterward
it was mistaken, and all its life thenceforth becomes miserable."

"But," I replied, "if the world at large had discovered that your
theory of love was the true one, it would long since have acted on
its discovery and put no destroying restraint or obligation on so
precious a possession. But the world found that a thousand accidents
would infallibly open the eyes of both parties to the fact that they
possessed but few qualities in common, or in counterpart, and with
such knowledge of good and evil they would infallibly separate. Hence
the foundation of society would be torn asunder and the rising
generation of helpless children become orphaned of home, the very
bulwark of life. Society must have assurances that people do not get
married simply as an experiment, but are willing to honorably
undertake the mutual sacrifices their act carries with it."

"I have already admitted," said she, "that the joy of spiritual love
hardly ever exists in its virgin force in the every-day world. I admit
that the necessary regulations of society, although they tend to
destroy it, must be enforced. The Atvatabar nation rests on the
marriage idea. At one time in our history the people strove for ideal
love and overthrew the ordinary marri