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 himself, it were much better for him
had he not done so, for the choice of a bride is not his, nor of a
bridegroom hers. Marriage to a Far Oriental is the most important
mercantile transaction of his whole life. It is, therefore, far too
weighty a matter to be entrusted to his youthful indiscretion; for
although the person herself is of lamentably little account in the
bargain, the character of her worldly circumstances is most material
to it. So she is contracted for with the same care one would
exercise in the choice of any staple business commodity.
The particular sample is not vital to the trade, but the grade of
goods is. She is selected much as the bride of the Vicar of Wakefield
chose her wedding-gown, only that the one was at least cut to suit,