From timidity or lack of opportunity a good half of
possible love cases never get so far, and at least another quarter do
there cease and determine. A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to
prepare the way and out with his declaration in the nick of time. And
then there is a fine solid sort of man, who goes on from snub to snub;
and if he has to declare forty times, will continue imperturbably
declaring, amid the astonished consideration of men and angels, until he
has a favourable answer. I daresay, if one were a woman, one would like
to marry a man who was capable of doing this, but not quite one who had
done so. It is just a little bit abject, and somehow just a little bit
gross; and marriages in which one of the parties has been thus battered
into consent scarcely form agreeable subjects for meditation. Love
should run out to meet love with open arms. Indeed, the ideal story is
that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered
consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark
room. From the first moment when they see each other, with a pang of
curiosity, through stage after stage of growing pleasure and
embarrassment, they can read the expression of their own trouble in each
other's eyes. There is here no declaration, properly so called; the
feeling is so plainly shared, that as soon as the man knows what it is
in his own heart, he is sure of what it is in the woman's.

This simple accident of falling in love is as beneficial as it is
astonishing. It arrests the petrifying influence of years, disproves
cold-blooded and cynical conclusions, and awakens dormant sensibilities.
Hitherto the man had found it a good policy to disbelieve the existence
of any enjoyment which was out of his reach; and thus he turned his back
upon the strong sunny parts of nature, and accustomed himself to look
exclusively on what was common and dull. He accepted a prose ideal, let
himself go blind of many sympathies by disuse; and if he were young and
witty, or beautiful, wilfully forwent these advantages. He joined
himself to the following of what, in the old mythology of love, was
prettily called _nonchaloir_; and in an odd mixture of feelings, a fling
of self-respect, a preference for selfish liberty, and a great dash of
that fear with which honest people regard serious interests, kept
himself back from the straightforward course of life among certain
selected activities. And now, all of a sudden,