"But, my darling, Colin and Chloe cannot spend their whole lives
singing madrigals and stringing daisies. It is not in human nature to
support, for any length of time, such superhuman bliss. The time will
come when Colin will find no more rhymes to 'dove,' and when Chloe
will tire of hearing the same one. It is possible that Herbert will
some time tire of reading Shelley to you,--nay, it is even possible
that the time may come when you will tire of hearing him; it is of
that time I would talk. The present is as perfectly satisfactory to me
as to you and Herbert, though not exactly in the same degree."

"Well, Uncle, what is your advice to Chloe disillusioned,--if you
insist that such a thing must be?"

"Simply this, my own dear little child," answered Uncle John, and his
voice took almost a solemn tone in its deep tenderness,--"when that
time comes, as come it must, do not worry your husband with idle
regrets for the past; remember that the husband is not the lover;
remember that your sex love through your imagination, and look always
for that clothing and refining of passion with sentiment, which, with
us, belong only to the poetry and chivalry of youthful ardor. We may
love you as well afterward,--nay, we may love you a great deal
better,--but we cannot take the trouble of telling you so every day;
we expect you to believe it once for all; and you,--you like to hear
it over and over again, and, not hearing it, you begin to fancy it no
longer true, and fall to trying experiments on your happiness. A fatal
error this, Alice. There is nothing that men so often enjoy as the
simply being let alone; but not one woman in a hundred can be made to
believe in such a strange enjoyment. Then the wife becomes
_exigeante_ and impatient, and the husband, after fruitless