Marriage renders no one immune. That is to say unless husband and wife both avoid infection, both can catch amatory fevers. In the game of life a man may venture many stakes where else a woman's fate is determined by a single throw of the dice. How often it happens that a young and inexperienced maid will look about her, will weigh and consider, will pick and choose, and, when she thinks she has found a man to her purpose, will set her cap at him will attract him, enslave him, bring him to her feet, make him propose, accept him as husband, give him all the sweets of engagement, regard herself and proclaim herself his affianced bride,-- all with most prudential-it may be, most praise-worthy-motives.
On a sudden, the man discovers that this was no real attachment, but a fictitious, almost an enforced, one; that the methods (so he thinks) were artificial, the results delusive. What happens? The man withdraws, politely, gallantly: he is sorry; they are unsuited; he did not know his own mind; he is sorry and so on, and so forth. They separate. And, in this concatenation of circumstances, action for breach of promise is out of the question. Besides, often enough, the girl, through pride or through sheer chagrin at the indifference of the man, pretends acquiescence. What happens to the man? Nothing. If his senses were stirred, he himself is heart-whole. He gave nothing; he merely received.
He proposes again to somebody else; is accepted; marries happily; rears a family. What happens to the girl? Everything. The man gave her nothing but she gave all, her lips, her looks, the recesses of her heart; the premonitions of the gift of her self; for, when she leant on him, looked up to him, clung to him, felt his strong encircling arms, was perturbed by his ardor, she gave that which was not to give again. Such woman is to be pitied. For, however much she may strive to make it appear that she gave nothing, that she had all to give again, not even her own soul will bear her witness, and sooner, or later, a subsequent lover (and such girl accepts the first lover that offers) will find a void where he hoped to find an inexhaustible treasure. For the woman cannot forever keep up a fictitious affection; and languid looks, and eyes that will not brighten, and smiles which are so evidently forced, bespeak her sympathies elsewhere. The dice they throw are their hearts and they have only one throw, when they have thrown away their hearts.
Men have so many dice to throw: income, status, title; virility, fortune, fame; good spirits, good connections, good looks; an air, a figure, a soul-stirring voice; manners, breeding, force; a good name, a good bank account. The whole marriage question revolves about a single point: The man wants a woman who shall be his and only his. The woman wants her a head of a home. And here again, and once again, we see the difference between the sexes. The one thing that the man wants is: a mate; The one thing that a woman wants is: a head and provider of a household. The man's thoughts never go beyond the woman. The woman's thoughts always and at once travel far beyond the man-to the children, the household, the home. This is great Nature's inexorable law. But little knows the woman, and less knows the man, that the nubile girl is merely obeying great Nature's inexorable law. What price woman pays for her high office!
For in this implicit, unquestioning, and unconscious obedience to Nature she performs perhaps her highest function. They obey so faithfully great Nature's law, and Nature so often plays them false-so very false, and so very often. The woman who gives her hand without her heart finds in time that she has made a sorry bargain-a sorrier bargain, perhaps, that the woman who gives her heart with out her hand. Passionately as a man desires a woman, the passionately-desired woman will in time discover that, unless she gives her heart with her hand, her gift suffers depreciation. Unless a woman gives her heart, how can she give her aid? Surely, unless a man's armor is buckled on for the strife of life by feminine sympathy, the fight is apt to be a sorry one at best; since
To simulate passion for an hour is possible; to simulate a life-long love that is challenging.
