I must live unloved merely because I love too much.

My wonder is that young men ever marry. The difficulty of selection must
be appalling. I walked the other evening in Hyde Park. The band of the
Life Guards played heart-lifting music, and the vast crowd were basking
in a sweet enjoyment such as rarely woos the English toiler. I strolled
among them, and my attention was chiefly drawn towards the women. The
great majority of them were, I suppose, shop-girls, milliners, and
others belonging to the lower middle-class. They had put on their best
frocks, their bonniest hats, their newest gloves. They sat or walked in
twos and threes, chattering and preening, as happy as young sparrows on
a clothes line. And what a handsome crowd they made! I have seen German
crowds, I have seen French crowds, I have seen Italian crowds; but
nowhere do you find such a proportion of pretty women as among the
English middle-class. Three women out of every four were worth looking
at, every other woman was pretty, while every fourth, one might say
without exaggeration, was beautiful. As I passed to and fro the idea
occurred to me: suppose I were an unprejudiced young bachelor, free
from predilection, looking for a wife; and let me suppose--it is only a
fancy--that all these girls were ready and willing to accept me. I have
only to choose! I grew bewildered. There were fair girls, to look at
whom was fatal; dark girls that set one's heart aflame; girls with red
gold hair and grave grey eyes, whom one would follow to the confines
of the universe; baby-faced girls that one longed to love and cherish;
girls with noble faces, whom a man might worship; laughing girls, with
whom one could dance through life gaily; serious girls, with whom life
would be sweet and good, domestic-looking girls--one felt such would
make delightful wives; they would cook, and sew, and make of home a
pleasant, peaceful place. Then wicked-looking girls came by, at the stab
of whose bold eyes all orthodox thoughts were put to a flight, whose
laughter turned the world into a mad carnival; girls one could mould;
girls from whom one could learn; sad girls one wanted to comfort; merry
girls who would cheer one; little girls, big girls, queenly girls,
fairy-like girls.

Suppose a young man had to select his wife in this fashion from some
twenty or thirty thousand; or that a girl were suddenly confronted with
eighteen thousand eligible young bachelors, and told to take the one
she