If only friendship would keep within bounds! How many women deceive
themselves into thinking that were devoutly to be wished! Yet probably,
as a matter of fact,

The very woman who avers she regrets that your friendship is not mere
Platonic, would resent the Platonism did it exist. Possibly not every
woman will understand this. Assuredly no woman will admit it. And yet,

It is impossible to conjecture in what an exchange of confidences may
terminate: it may be a kiss, or it may be a quarrel. But

Confidences are evoked rather by friendship than by love:

A woman will tell a man friend what she will not tell a lover.

Few lovers will understand this, fewer still will believe it. Yet it is
true, and the explication of its truth would be long and complex. This
much may be said:

Love idealizes; friendship does not. At the same time,

Love probes the innermost recesses of the womanly nature; and, until the
woman is wholly won,

The woman resents the inspection of love. She knows that,

To stimulate love, the woman must conceal, not reveal;

To stimulate love, the woman must conceal, not reveal. Furthermore,