old. All depends of what the two loves are made. If it is bodily fire
and no more, of course the new love will put out the old as the great
sun puts out a little smouldering fire; and the majority of so-called
love-stories are merely disastrous conflagrations of that sort. In such
cases the new love is no sooner found than the old becomes grievous, a
burden; by a malignant witchcraft the old charms have grown veritably
repellent, and "all the heaven that was" irretrievably disenchanted.
Which is the illusion, one wonders,--the original enchantment or the
final disenchantment?

When, however, love can give a better account of its preferences than
this, and point out, say in Jenny, many good reasons why she was at
first and must for ever remain love-worthy, whatever rival reasons for
love another woman may bring; when too there is added to those reasons
for loving Jenny the dear habit of loving her, the gratitude--love must
forgive the word--which has accumulated interest upon the original love,
the beauties that have been gained by becoming familiarities, and the
familiarities that have become beauties by very use,--well, really, is
it such a hardship, after all, for a man to be expected to keep true to
his Jenny?

Oh! but passion doesn't reason like this. Indeed, O passionate reader!
Is passion, then, merely a wild beast, a savage, a blind fire? Must it
forfeit its fine name if it remembers mercy or owns duty? Is it any less
passion because it refuses sometimes to glut itself, and dares to go
hungry all its days instead; any less passion because it chooses to burn
up its own heart in an agony of its own consuming fire?

Mere violence is not a strength but a weakness in passion, and sometimes
there is more passion in patience than in anything else in the world. A