of colour. How many may love him? The loveliest may one day smile upon his
knee! and shall he renounce all for that little creature who has just
finished singing, and is handing round cups of tea? Every bachelor
contemplating marriage says, "I shall have to give up all for one, one."

The young girl is often pretty but her prettiness is vague and uncertain,
it inspires a sort of pitying admiration, but it suggests nothing; the very
essence of the young girl's being is that she should have nothing to
suggest, therefore the beauty of the young face fails to touch the
imagination. No past lies hidden in those translucent eyes, no story of
hate, disappointment, or sin. Nor is there in nine hundred and ninety-nine
cases in a thousand any doubt that the hand, that spends at least a pound a
day in restaurants and cabs, will succeed in gathering the muslin flower if
he so wills it, and by doing so he will delight every one. Where, then, is
the struggle? where, then, is the triumph? Therefore, I say that if a young
man's heart is not set on children, and tiresome dinner parties, the young
girl presents to him no possible ideal. But the woman of thirty presents
from the outset all that is necessary to ensnare the heart of a young man.
I see her sitting in her beautiful drawing-room, all composed by, and all
belonging to her. Her chair is placed beneath an evergreen plant, and the
long leaves lean out as if to touch her neck. The great white and red roses
of the _d'aubusson_ carpet are spread enigmatically about her feline
feet; a grand piano leans its melodious mouth to her; and there she sits
when her visitors have left her, playing Beethoven's sonatas in the dreamy
firelight. The spring-tide shows but a bloom of unvarying freshness; August
has languished and loved in the strength of the sun. She is stately, she is
tall. What sins, what disappointments, what aspirations lie in those grey
eyes, mysteriously still, and mysteriously revealed. These a young man
longs to know of, they are his life. He imagines himself sitting by her,
when the others have gone, holding her hand, calling on her name; sometimes