nsible man to behave as he did--falling in love with a girl who really
had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary
virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had
fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient
trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in
so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find
rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible
men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance,
see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine
themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all
proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every
respect--indeed, so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden
ladies in their neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will
occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was
one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less--nay, I think
the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed
Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the
very strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is
it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? To feel its
wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the
delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding
together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration,
melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has
been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one
emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of
self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow and
your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it
a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's
cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or
the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is
like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and
far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius
have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them. It is more
than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a
far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for it