None the less it is not always and only the husbands who make mistakes
in this part of life. A woman must be at least willing to be awakened
and made responsive, and many women have a strange power of controlling
themselves in this matter. They can repress their natures even when
desire has begun to stir. They can remain cold at will. And they do
it for many and varied reasons. Sometimes their reasons are purely
selfish--they cannot or will not be bothered. Sometimes they allow a
sense of pique over some trifling grievance to inhibit their natural
instincts. Sometimes because they shrink from the labors of motherhood
they acquire a distaste for this whole side of married life. And
meantime their husbands are men in whom ardent love naturally,
inevitably, and rightly produces a desire for intimacy. They may be
willing to be patient. They may study their wives' moods, and try to
learn to be chivalrous lovers. But if day after day they meet with no
response--if on the contrary they find their wives deliberately
checking all response, is it not clear that a situation is created that
cannot but threaten married happiness? Is it not inevitable that
husbands so treated should begin to wonder whether their wives really
love them? For love makes people unselfish, and equally it makes them
understanding. On the other hand, when wives do understand, and learn
in this respect to be generous, they bind their husbands to them in new
chains of affection. In some husbands almost the strongest emotion
they have towards their wives is a sense of profound gratitude for a
generosity that made those wives willing to meet them again and again
in love's high places, and allow them that ultimate expression of
their passion through which nature is restored to balance and peace.
And surely it might help wives to attain to that generosity if they
would but remember that it is love for them that kindles passion, and
that it is an ever-renewed sense of their lovableness that keeps their