ifferences
between husband and wife. It is absolutely impossible for a stranger
to know just where the trouble is and who the guilty party is.
Sometimes there is no guilty party. Both husband and wife may be
right; they may both be lovely people and still together they may form
an incompatible, explosive mixture. And then again the party that to
outsiders may seem the angelic one may in reality be the devilish one.
It is a well-known fact that people who to the outside world may seem
the personification of honor and good nature may be very devils at
home. I have long ago given up not only meddling in, but even judging,
domestic disharmonies. For it is almost impossible for an outsider to
judge justly. I knew a husband who was considered a paragon of virtue.
And when a clash came between him and his wife everybody was inclined
to blame the wife. But it came out later that the husband had certain
ways about him which made the wife's life a very torture. And vice
versa. I know of another case where the wife was considered the
sweetest thing in the world. She had nice ways about her, but she
disliked her husband and made his life a hell. With genuine chivalry
he bore everything, believing that it was a man's duty to bear his
cross. She was unfaithful to him, but she was so clever and cunning
that neither he nor anybody else suspected it. The fact became
painfully patent to him, when on one of the rare occasions that they
came together she infected him with a venereal disease, which
incapacitated him for a long time. Nobody knew why he insisted upon a
separation, and everybody, with the exception of his physician and
perhaps one or two others, was blaming him for an unfeeling brute.

I will therefore repeat that as a general thing domestic tangles
should be untangled by the tanglers themselves. It is not safe to call
in outsiders--relatives or friends; they are apt to make the tangle
more tangled, and, what is more, they are quite likely to put the
blame on the innocent party, and bestow upon the guilty party the
Montyon prize for virtue and gentleness.

CHAPTER FIFTY

WHAT IS LOVE?

Is Love Definable?--Raising a Corner of the Veil--Two Opinions of
Love--The First Opinion: Sexual Intercourse and Love--The Second
Opinion--The Grain of Truth in Each--The Truth Concerning
Love--Foundation of Love--Sexual Attraction and Love--The Frigid
Woman and Her Husband--Puzzling Cases of Love--The
Paradox--Blindness