n will imbrue her hands with blood, and a man will fling honor to
the winds, and yet the twain regard each other as impeccant and
impeccable.--Till Pippa passes; then,

Love always awakes to the fact that not even a community of two can live
without law; and that

Though human laws may be outraged, those divine may not. And assuredly,

The ideal love is the divine love. And, in ideal love,

Strange, strange, but true, in a great and ardent love, when at last that
is offered which was long sought, there supervenes upon the lovers a
great tenderness, which hesitates to make their own that for which they
yearned. Almost it were as if

A psychic monitor warned the conqueror to be clement, and the captive to
be kind. This

Tenderness is the worship of the soul by the soul. And

Of all tests of love tenderness is the truest. But indeed, indeed

In love there are heights above heights, depths beneath depths: who shall
scale them, who shall plumb?

(5) See Plato, "Symposium", 180 et seq.

* * *

V. On Lovers

"Si vis amari ama."
--Seneca

Lovers think the world was made for them.--And so perhaps it was.

* * *

To each other, lovers are the most interesting personages alive; but
onlookers regard them partly with amusement, partly with pity, partly
with compassion--in the etymological sense of that word.

* * *

The first wonder of every accepted lover is that he should be the
accepted lover of such a woman. --What the woman thinks . . . what the
woman thinks, probably not even she herself knows. Probably each woman
thinks her own thoughts.

To doubt whether one is in love is to prove oneself out of it.

* * *

To impress upon the lover the still-existing necessity of refining gold
or painting the lily is out of the question. Yet every woman attempts
it.

* * *

If there is one proverb more distasteful than another to a
hot-headed lover, it is that half a loaf is better than no bread.

* * *

Children, dogs, and old people are difficult to deceive. Lovers who have
to use circumspection should remember this.

* * *

A doubting lover should mark how, and for whom, his woman dresses.

* * *

To die for a woman would perhaps, to a young and ardent lover, not be
difficult; to wage incessant warfare with the world for her, that perhaps
is not so easy. But it is the better test of love; and perhaps also the
better preserver and replenisher of love. For

Little as people see