right about it, and that I should have
to adapt myself to a world in which, friendship being a passion, love
must needs be nothing less than rapture.

The homely proverb, "Every Jack has his Gill," may, I suppose, be taken
to mean that for all men there are certain women expressly suited by
mental and moral as well as by physical constitution. It is a thought
painful, rather than cheering, that this may be the truth, so altogether
do the chances preponderate against the ability of these elect ones
to recognize each other even if they meet, seeing that speech is so
inadequate and so misleading a medium of self-revelation. But among the
mind-readers, the search for one's ideal mate is a quest reasonably sure
of being crowned with success, and no one dreams of wedding unless it
be; for so to do, they consider, would be to throw away the choicest
blessing of life, and not alone to wrong themselves and their unfound
mates, but likewise those whom they themselves and those undiscovered
mates might wed. Therefore, passionate pilgrims, they go from isle to
isle till they find each other, and, as the population of the islands is
but small, the pilgrimage is not often long.

When I met her first we were in company, and I was struck by the sudden
stir and the looks and smiling interest with which all around turned and
regarded us, the women with moistened eyes. They had read her thought
when she saw me, but this I did not know, neither what was the custom
in these matters, till afterward. But I knew, from the moment she first
fixed her eyes on me, and I felt her mind brooding upon mine, how truly
I had been told by those other women that the feeling with which they
had inspired me was not love.

With people who become acquainted at a glance, and old friends in an
hour, wooing is naturally not a long process. Indeed, it may be said
that between lovers among mind-readers there is no wooing, but merely
recognition. The day after we met, she became mine.

Perhaps I cannot better illustrate how subordinate the merely physical
element is in the impression which mind-readers form of their friends
than by mentioning an incident that occurred some months after our
union. This was my discovery, wholly by accident, that my love, in whose
society I had almost constantly been, had not the least idea what was
the color of my eyes, or whether my hair and complexion were light
or dark. Of course, as soon as I asked her the question, she read