treme youth, remains until she
has children. Then, under the influence of peculiarly strong
responsibilities, she gives her youth to them, and with it the
plasticity of her nature.

At present Weir was in the stage where she analyzed herself for her
lover's benefit, and confided to him every sensation she had ever
experienced; and he encouraged her. He had frequently encouraged other
women to do the same thing, and in each case, after the first few
chapters, he had found it a good deal of a bore. The moment a woman
falls in love, that moment she becomes an object of paramount interest
in her own eyes. All her life she has regarded herself from the
outside; her wants and needs have been purely objective; consequently
she has not known herself, and her spiritual nature has claimed but
little of her attention. But under the influence of love she plunges
into herself, as it were, and her life for the time being is purely
subjective. She broadens, expands, develops, concentrates; and her
successive evolutions are a perpetual source of delight and absorbing
study. Moreover, her sense of individuality grows and flourishes,
and becomes so powerful that she is unalterably certain--until it is
over--that her experience is an isolated and wholly remarkable
one. Naturally she must talk to someone; she is teeming with her
discoveries, her excursions into the heretofore unexplored depths
of human nature; the necessity for a confidant is not one to be
withstood, and who so natural or understanding a confidant as her
lover? If the lover be a clever man and an analyst, he is profoundly
interested at first, particularly if she have some trick of mind which
gives her, or seems to give her, the smack of individuality. If he be
a true lover, and a man with any depth of feeling and of mind, he
does not tire, of course; but otherwise he eventually becomes either
oppressed or frightened; he either wishes that women would not take
themselves so seriously and forget to be amusing, or her belief in her
peculiar and absolute originality communicates itself to him, and he
does not feel equal to handling and directing so remarkable a passion.

There was no question about the strength and verity of Dartmouth's
love for Weir, and he had yet to be daunted by anything in life;
consequently he found his present course of psychological research
without flaw. Moreover, the quaintness of her nature pervaded all
her ideas. She had an old-fashioned simplici