led me. I was drawn by a power that was
resistless. I was mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded
our marriage. I was madder still during our honeymoon--until the
shadows began to fall that fatal Christmas Eve." She paused and her lips
trembled. "Oh, Doctor, what is love?"

The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He picked up a pebble from
the ground and flicked it carelessly across the drive, lifted his head
at last and asked earnestly:

"Shall I tell you the truth?"

"Yes--your own particular brand, please--the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth."

"I'll try," he began soberly. "If I were a poet, naturally I would use
different language. As I'm only a prosaic doctor and physiologist I may
shock your ideals a little."

"No matter," she interrupted. "They couldn't well get a harder jolt than
they have had already."

He nodded and went on:

"There are two elemental human forces that maintain life--hunger
and love. They are both utterly simple, otherwise they could not be
universal. Hunger compels the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce
itself. There has never been anything mysterious about either of
these forces and there never will be--except in the imagination of
sentimentalists.

"Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen years she first applies
this force to the development of the body before she begins to lay the
foundation of the second. Until this second development is complete the
passion known as love cannot be experienced.

"What is this second development? Very simple again. At the base of the
brain of every child there is a vacant space during the first twelve or
fifteen years. During the age of twelve to fourteen in girls, thirteen
to fifteen in boys, this vacant space is slowly filled by a new lobe
of the brain and with its growth comes the consciousness of sex and the
development of sex powers.

"This new nerve center becomes on maturity a powerful physical magnet.
The moment this magnet comes into contact with an organization which
answers its needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of hunger,
violent desire is excited. If both these magnets should be equally
powerful, the disturbance to both will be great. The longer the personal
association is continued the more violent becomes this disturbance,
until in highly sensitive natures it develops into an obsession which
obscures reason and crushes the will.

"The meaning of this impulse is a