fierceness of spirit seems to have
burnt itself out in their preliminary hesitations and struggles against each
other and themselves. Whether love in its entirety has, speaking generally, the
same elementary meaning for women as for men, is very doubtful. Civilization has
been at work there. But the fact is that those two display, in every phase of
discovery and response, an exact accord. Both show themselves amazingly
ingenuous in the practice of sentiment. I believe that those who know women
won't be surprised to hear me say that she was as new to love as he was. During
their retreat in the region of the Maritime Alps, in a small house built of dry
stones and embowered with roses, they appear all through to be less like
released lovers than as companions who had found out each other's fitness in a
specially intense way. Upon the whole, I think that there must be some truth in
his insistence of there having always been something childlike in their
relation. In the unreserved and instant sharing of all thoughts, all
impressions, all sensations, we see the naïveness of a children's foolhardy
adventure. This unreserve expressed for him the whole truth of the situation.
With her it may have been different. It might have been assumed; yet nobody is
altogether a comedian; and even comedians themselves have got to believe in the
part they play. Of the two she appears much the more assured and confident. But
if in this she was a comedienne then it was but a great achievement of her
ineradicable honesty. Having once renounced her honourable scruples she took
good care that he should taste no flavour of misgivings in the cup. Being older
it was she who imparted its character to the situation. As to the man if he had
any superiority of his own it was simply the superiority of him who loves with
the greater self-surrender.
    This is what appears from the pages I have discreetly suppressed - partly
out of regard for the pages themselves. In every, even terrestrial, mystery
there is as it were a sacred core. A sustained commentary on love is not fit for
every eye. A universal experience is exactly the sort of thing which is most
difficult to appraise justly in a particular instance.
    How this particular instance affected Rose, who was the only companion of
the two hermits in their rose-embowered hut of stones, I regret not to be able
to report; but I will venture to say that for reasons on which I need not
enlarge, the girl could not have been very reassured by what she saw. It seems
to me that her devotion could