determine. A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to
prepare the way and out with his declaration in the nick of
time. And then there is a fine solid sort of man, who goes on
from snub to snub; and if he has to declare forty times, will
continue imperturbably declaring, amid the astonished
consideration of men and angels, until he has a favourable
answer. I daresay, if one were a woman, one would like to
marry a man who was capable of doing this, but not quite one
who had done so. It is just a little bit abject, and somehow
just a little bit gross; and marriages in which one of the
parties has been thus battered into consent scarcely form
agreeable subjects for meditation. Love should run out to
meet love with open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is that of
two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered
consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into
a dark room. From the first moment when they see each other,
with a pang of curiosity, through stage after stage of growing
pleasure and embarrassment, they can read the expression of
their own trouble in each other's eyes. There is here no
declaration properly so called; the feeling is so plainly
shared, that as soon as the man knows what it is in his own
heart, he is sure of what it is in the woman's.

This simple accident of falling in love is as beneficial
as it is astonishing. It arrests the petrifying influence of
years, disproves cold-blooded and cynical conclusions, and
awakens dormant sensibilities. Hitherto the man had found it
a good policy to disbelieve the existence of any enjoyment
which was out of his reach; and thus he turned his back upon
the strong sunny parts of nature, and accustomed himself to