his creed.

* * *

A circumpsecting lover is a woman's abhorrence: as a calculating
mistress is a man's.

* * *

Let a lover but put himself into the hands of his mistress, and he is
safe. Since

The man she really loves, a woman will shield through thick and thin,
through right and wrong. For,

Concerning a man, the only question a woman asks is, not, "Is he right or
wrong?" but, "Is he mine or another's?"--We men therefore

Leave a woman to get her lover out of a scrape.

* * *

It is to be feared that the men and women who love but once and forever
are not usually to be found outside of romances.

With women, love is a river, ever-flowing, from the brook in girlhood,
(4) to the estuary of womanhood. Like a river, too,

Woman's love is fed by all the streams it meets. On the other hand,

With man, love is a geyser.

(4) Standing with reluctant feet
Where the brook and river meet.
--Longfellow, "Maidenhood"

* * *

The languishing lover has gone out of date; he has been replaced by the
diverting one. And the change is significant of much:
The early nineteenth-century maid pretended to ignorance; the early
twentieth-century maid to omniscience.

The early nineteenth-century suitor protested; but

The early twentieth-century suitor has to contest. In the one case,

The woman tacitly acknowledges an inequality. In the other case,

The man has to openly to recognize his equal. Nevertheless,

The fundamental relationship between the sexes do not materially vary
from century to century, much as conventional manners and customs may.
For, after all,

Always what a man seeks in a woman is: love. And

In all love there is something perfectly and Paradisiacally pristine.

Would the most emancipated woman have love otherwise? At all events,

Perhaps the most womanly position a woman can occupy is: with her head on
her lover's heart. At this the strong-minded may scoff. They may.
* * *

The obsession of the male heart by one woman ousts from it all other
women. Thus,

The accepted young man regards all women but the one as he would regard
fashion-plates. To the young woman men continue to be men. That is to
say,

A man dives headlong into love. A woman paddles into it. And the
woman's hesitation at the brink of the stream exasperates the spluttering
man. In short,

A man's heart is captured wholly and at a stroke. A woman's heart
surrenders itself piecemeal.

Where