and earth," and there are more intricacies of feeling and more
sloughs and depths, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. A definite
understanding as to sofa cushions and tobacco smoke does not always
insure unwearied forbearance and devotion. With love, on the other hand,
disappointment is very much less likely to spring up, for the reason
that it is free from calculation. Love is a sympathy. It takes hold, it
grows upon the soul and the senses, and it does not flee before argument
and explanation.

Still less can I admit that possession kills love. Do we give up living
because the world is based on Will and Idea? Yet to will is to want,
Schopenhauer tells us, and to want is to be in pain. Do we know
ourselves in pain every minute of our lives? Hardly. This applies. You
hold that, with the fulfilled hope and the appeased hunger, indifference
takes the place of desire. It reads so in logic, but not in life. If
what is in our possession be good, we prize it more highly for its being
within reach. The good in our keeping does not sate; it pains with
divine hungers. We do not tire of what we have; we rise to it. We do not
know the sweetness of being steadfast until we are so impelled by the
love with which we have grown great. The lover may well say: "She was
not my ideal; before I knew her I was not great enough to think her. She
taught me."

Besides, an acquaintance with your wife's faults does not kill your
love. You cannot turn from your brother or your friend if he commit even
a lurid act; you cannot turn from a stranger; much less can you turn
from your beloved. Herbert, when men set themselves to judge, they are
invariably ridiculous and an offence to high heaven. Believe me, it is
artificial. The true judge cares not for the fact of the deed, but for
its motive. And the lover knows the motive. He has the key to the life.
He knows his beloved, not as she is, but "as she was born to be." His
lips press and his arms enfold not her so much as the ideal of her, and
unless she unmake herself, he cannot unlove her. "To judge a man by the
fruit of his actions," says Professor Edward Howard Griggs, "it is
necessary to know all of the fruit, which is impossible. You can only
know what he eternally must be if you catch the aspect of his soul and
grow to understand his aspirations and his loves." To idealise,
therefore, is not to be blind, but to be far-seeing.

There is another way of looking on this question of the parado