existence, and by the society of womankind no
one means merely the daily and hourly social intercourse which consists
in exchanging the same set of remarks half a dozen times a day with as
many beings of gentle sex who, to the careless eye of ordinary man,
differ from each other in dress rather than in face or thought. There
are eminently manly men, that is to say men fearless, strong, honourable
and active, to whom the common five o'clock tea presents as much
distraction and offers as much womanly sympathy as they need; who choose
their intimate friends among men, rather than among women, and who die
at an advanced age without ever having been more than comfortably in
love--and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The masculine man may be as
brave, as strong and as scrupulously just in all his dealings, but on
the other hand he may be weak, cowardly and a cheat, and he is apt to
inherit the portion of sinners, whatever his moral characteristics may
be, good or bad.

Orsino was certainly not unmanly, but he was also eminently masculine
and he began to suffer from the loss of Maria Consuelo's conversation in
a way that surprised himself. His acquaintance with her, to give it a
mild name, had been the first of the kind which he had enjoyed, and it
contrasted too strongly with the crude experiences of his untried youth
not to be highly valued by him and deeply regretted. He might pretend to
laugh at it, and repeat to himself that his Egeria had been but a very
superficial person, fervent in the reading of the daily novel and
possibly not even worldly wise; he did not miss her any the less for
that. A little sympathy and much patience in listening will go far to
make a woman of small gifts indispensable even to a man of superior
talent, especially when he thinks himself misunderstood in his ordinary
surroundings. The sympathy passes for intelligence and the patience for
assent and encouragement--a touch of the hand, and there is friendship,
a tear, a sigh, and devotion stands upon the stage, bearing in her arms
an infant love who learns to walk his part at the first suspicion of a
kiss.

Orsino did not imagine that he had exhausted the world's capabilities of
happiness. The age of Byronism, as it used to be called, is over.
Possibly tragedies are more real and frequent in our day than when the
century was young; at all events those which take place seem to draw a
new element of horror from those undefinable, mechanical, prosa