ven it to a man who knows not of
the treasure he has never sought to win. The case, I grant, is rare. I
believe that a woman seldom bestows her love save in return for other
love--be it silent or spoken--real or imaginary. If it is not so, either
she has deceived herself, or has been deceived.

But the thing is quite possible--ay, and happens sometimes--that a woman
unselfish, unexacting in all her affections, more prone to give than
to receive, thinking perhaps very little of love or marriage, may be
unconsciously attracted by some imagined perfection in the other sex,
and be thus led on through the worship of abstract goodness until she
wakes to find that she has learned to love _the man_. For what is
love in its purest and divinest sense, but that innate yearning after
perfection which we vainly hope to find in some other human soul; this
is as likely to be felt by a woman as by a man--ay, and by one most pure
from every thought of unfeminine boldness, vanity, or sin.

I know, too, that from many a sage and worthy matron my Olive has for
ever earned her condemnation, because, at last discovering her mournful
secret, she did not strive in horror and shame to root out this
misplaced attachment. Then, after years of self-martyrdom, she might at
last have pointed to her heart's trampled garden, and said, "Look what I
have had strength to do!" But from such a wrecked and blasted soil what
aftergrowth could ever spring?

Better, a thousand times, that a woman to whom this doom has come
unwittingly, without her seeking--as inevitably and inexorably as
fate--should pause, stand steadfast, and look it in the face, without
fear. She cannot disguise it, or wrestle with it, or fly from it Let her
meet it as she would meet death--solemnly, calmly, patiently. Let her
draw nigh and look upon the bier of her life's dead hope, until the
pale image grows beautiful as sleep; then cover it--bury it--if she can.
Perhaps it may one day rise from the grave, wearing a likeness no longer
human, but divine.

It is time that we women should begin to teach and to think thus. It is
meet that we--maidens, wives, mothers, to whom the lines have fallen in
more pleasant places--should turn and look on that pale sisterhood--some
carrying meekly to the grave their heavy unuttered secret, some living
unto old age, to bear the world's smile of pity, even of derision,
over an "unfortunate attachment." Others, perhaps, furnishing a text
whereupon prud