ransformed into
funereal functions. Everything suggests impropriety and indecency to
her distorted mind, and she is the cause that, in England, and also to
some extent in America, art, literature, and life, have to lie in order
to avoid running the risk of deserving her frowns.

CHAPTER X

SORE TRIALS FOR PEOPLE IN LOVE--WILL LOVE TRIUMPH OVER THE AFFLICTIONS
OF THE BODY?

A pathetic story--Could you whisper words of love through an
ear-trumpet?--The case presented on the stage--Take care of the
woman you love.

The following reflections were suggested to me by a pitiful story that
I heard a few days ago only. A young, beautiful girl, belonging to the
best society, was engaged to be married. During her lover's absence she
had typhoid fever. She recovered and is now quite well, but (the 'but'
is terrible) she has not a single hair left on her head. Of course, she
wears a wig, but she has tried every possible thing, consulted the most
eminent specialists, to no avail. Her lover is returning very soon. He
knew she was ill, but does not know the terrible misfortune which has
befallen his beautiful _fiancee_. Will he marry her? Will his love be
powerful enough to overlook the loss of woman's best ornament on his
sweetheart's head? Will he be able to behold her with the wig off, and
say to her: 'I love you just the same?' In a melodrama he would, but
will _he_? I dare not answer the question. We do not live in heroic
times nowadays, and you must not ask too much of man.

As physical beauty is an appanage far more precious to a woman than a
man, the question may perhaps be better put in the following manner: If
a man loves a woman, will her disfigurement--the loss of a limb, the
loss of her hair, deafness, blindness, or any other calamity of this
sort which may afflict her--destroy the love of that man for that
woman?

It is all very well to say that love is the yearning of the soul, but
it must be admitted that the man himself is closely associated with it,
and that the face is the means of expressing what the soul feels. You
can softly whisper 'I love you' in a woman's ear; but if the poor thing
is deaf, you cannot shout these three words at her, much less blow them
through a trumpet. If you doubt me, try it in a play, and you will see
the effect it will infallibly produce on the audience. Why, they will
roar. Deafness is terrible, so dull, so prosaic, so suggestive of old
age; I have sometimes he