s poured out, the draught is not new,
for they have quaffed before many an adulterated potion and have long
pretended that the wine of life is milk. For a moment there is a
difference, and they recognize that the incredible can happen; each
thinks the time has come:

_"Wenn ich dem Augenblick werd sagen:
Verweile doch, du bist so schoen . . ."_

Then the false exaltation subsides: not even a saint could stand a daily
revelation; the revelation becomes a sacramental service, the
sacramental service a routine, and then, little by little, there is
nothing. But nature, as usual abhorring a vacuum, does not allow the
newly opened eyes to dwell upon a void; it leaves them clear, it allows
them to compare. One day two demi-gods gaze into the eyes of two
mortals and resent their fugitive quality. Another day two mortals gaze
into the eyes of two others, whom suddenly they discover to be
demi-gods. Some resist the trickery of nature, some succumb, some are
fortunate, some are strong. But the two who once were united are
divorced by the three judges of the Human Supreme Court: Contrast,
Habit, and Change.

Time cures no ills; sometimes it provides poultices, often salt, for
wounds. Time gives man his work, which he always had, but did not
realize in the days of his enchantment; but to woman time seldom offers
anything except her old drug, love. Oh! there are other things,
children, visiting cards, frocks, skating rinks, Christian Science teas,
and Saturday anagrams, but all these are but froth. Brilliant, worldly,
hard-eyed, urgent, pleasure-drugged, she still believes there is an
exquisite reply to the question:

"Will the love you are so rich in
Light a fire in the kitchen,
And will the little God of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?"

Only the little God of Love does not call, and the butcher does.

It is her own fault. It is always one's own fault when one has
illusions, though it is, in a way, one's privilege. She is attracted to
a strange man because he is tall and beautiful, or short and ugly and
has a clever head, or looks like a barber; he comes of different stock,
from another country, out of another class--and these two strangers
suddenly attempt to blend a total of, say, fifty-five years of different
lives into a single one! Gold will melt, but it needs a very fierce
fire, and as soon as the fire is withdrawn, it hardens again. Seldom is
there anything to make it fluid once more, for the attraction, on