e plucked upon our pathway,
we heap them in her lap, certain that even the poorest will not be
tossed aside. Small wonder that we bring as many as we may when she
bends her head so lovingly to each.

As our past rises in reminiscence with all its oldtime reality, no less
clearly does our future stand out to us in mirage. What we would be
seems as realizable as what we were. Seen by another beside ourselves,
our castles in the air take on something of the substance of
stereoscopic sight. Our airiest fancies seem solid facts for their
reality to her, and gilded by lovelight, they glitter and sparkle like
a true palace of the East. For once all is possible; nothing lies beyond
our reach. And as we talk, and she listens, we two seem to be floating
off into an empyrean of our own like the summer clouds above our heads,
as they sail dreamily on into the far-away depths of the unfathomable
sky.

It would be more than mortal not to believe in ourselves when another
believes so absolutely in us. Our most secret thoughts are no longer
things to be ashamed of, for she has sanctioned them. Whatever doubt may
have shadowed us as to our own imaginings disappears before the smile
of her appreciation. That her appreciation may be prejudiced is not a
possibility we think of then. She understands us, or seems to do so to
our own better understanding of ourselves. Happy the man who is thus
understood! Happy even he who imagines that he is, because of her eager
wish to comprehend; fortunate, indeed, if in this one respect he never
comes to see too clearly.

No such blissful infatuation falls to the lot of the Far Oriental.
He never is the dupe of his own desire, the willing victim of his
self-illusion. He is never tempted to reveal himself, and by thus
revealing, realize. No loving appreciation urges him on toward the
attainment of his own ideal. That incitement to be what he would seem to
be, to become what she deems becoming, he fails to feel. Custom has so
far fettered fancy that even the wish to communicate has vanished. He
has now nothing to tell; she needs no ear to hear. For she is not his
love; she is only his wife,--what is left of a romance when the romance
is left out. Worse still, she never was anything else. He has not so
much as a memory of her, for he did not marry her for love; he may not
love of his own accord, nor for the matter of that does he wish to do
so. If by some mischance he should so far forget to forget himse