r question instead--

"You ask me what I think about love, getting engaged, married, all the
rest of it. I am only a looker on, and must always be, but it _does_
interest me all the same! I have marvelled with every one else over the
nature of that indefinable something which draws two people together,
and which has nothing on earth to do with suitability as understood by
the people. John may be a model of excellence; amiable, rich, handsome,
devoted, but on their first meeting it is settled in Louisa's mind as
irrevocably as the trump of doom that he would never _do_! She knew it
at a flash, the moment he entered the room; the second he touched her
hand. And Tom is poor; he is plain, he looks as though on occasion he
might be abominably disagreeable. Louisa looks upon his cross face, and
acknowledges to herself `My Lord and King!'--It's a _feel_ that decides
it, not a fact. In the great, big choice of life, reason doesn't count.
Two men have asked me to marry them (You wouldn't know their names,
even if you heard them, so I am betraying no confidence); I should have
said `no' in any case, but I might have _wanted_ to say `yes'! I
didn't! I felt that as a choice a jump into the river would be
preferable, yet from a sane, sensible point of view there was no reason
why I should not have fallen in love--and--especially in one case! every
obvious reason why I _should_! I couldn't for my life tell you what was
wrong, except--_Everything_! I should have hated his very virtues by my
own fireside. His `little _ways_' would have driven me daft, but I can
imagine wrapping up those self-same little ways right in the middle of
my heart, as the dearest things, the sweetest, the most winsome, if they
had belonged to another man!

"Engaged people are a bore to outsiders, but for themselves it must be a
good time. To be able to speak out, after bottling it all in; to be
left alone in peace, instead of living on odd snatches of conversation
in the midst of crowds; to feel _sure_; to be done with `I',--and become
for ever `We.'--It must feel so warm, and restful, and rich! It isn't
so much the mere happiness that impresses me; it's the _rest_. I wish
it were possible to get engaged without being married, then I should
arrange it with indecent haste, with an orphan, with a motor car, and we
_would_ be happy! He should be clean shaven, and rather plain, but it
must be just my special fad in the way of plainness--a trim, sli