e most cruel, the most
irresistible of passions. In his least form he is mighty. A little love
has destroyed many a great friendship. The merest outward semblance of
love has made such havoc as no intellect could repair. The reality has
made heroes and martyrs, traitors and murderers, whose names will not
be forgotten, for glory or for shame. Helen is not the only woman whose
smile has kindled the beacon of a ten years' war, nor Antony the only
man who has lost the world for a caress. It may be that the Helen who
shall work our destruction is even now twisting and braiding her golden
hair; it may be that the new Antony, who is to lose this same old world
again, already stands upon the steps of Cleopatra's throne. Love's day
is not over yet, nor has man outgrown the love of woman.

But the power to love greatly is a gift, differing much in kind, though
little in degree, from the inspiration of the poet, the genius of the
artist, or the unerring instinct and eagle's glance of the conqueror;
for conqueror, artist and poet are moved by passion and not by reason,
which is but their servant in so far as it can be commanded to move
others, and their deadliest enemy when it would move themselves. Let the
passion and the instrument but meet, being suited to each other, and all
else must go down before them. Few, indeed, are they to whom is given
that rich inheritance, and they themselves alone know all their wealth,
and all their misery, all the boundless possibilities of happiness that
are theirs, and all the dangers and the terrors that beset their path.
He who has won woman in the face of daring rivals, of enormous odds, of
gigantic obstacles, knows what love means; he who has lost her, having
loved her, alone has measured with his own soul the bitterness of
earthly sorrow, the depth of total loneliness, the breadth of the
wilderness of despair. And he who has sorrowed long, who has long been
alone, but who has watched the small, twinkling ray still burning upon
the distant border of his desert--the faint glimmer of a single star
that was still above the horizon of despair--he only can tell what utter
darkness can be upon the face of the earth when that last star has
set for ever. With it are gone suddenly the very quarters and cardinal
points of life's chart, there is no longer any right hand or any left,
any north or south, any rising of the sun or any going down, any forward
or backward direction in his path, any heaven abo