Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

'' Virgi7nb7is Pticrisqiicr 53
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