there is no variety of emotion. And we court Chloe at forty, to the same tune with which we deluded Daphne at twenty.
Can this be so? Has the old, great, strong, insensate passion of youth really past away? Well, it may be, for youth has gone, too. Life takes great strides now. There is but one step from childhood to middle age, which begins now, I fancy, at eighteen, while senility sets in probably at thirty. The age loves suddenness—it has suppressed transitional periods; the world would abolish twilight if it could. One day we are in the nursery, and the next ordering hair-dye or being measured for wigs. The pace is tremendous. Last week there were some children prattling on my knee: this week, to hear them talk, makes me feel quite an old man—ay! old and foolish.
It will excite little surprise, then, after this, when I say that I adhere very much to the old story-telling creed: that I believe very much in the love, one and ndivisible. It may be a dream—let me have it. It may be the hero of the novelists is not quite so white as he has been painted. Turn to the courageous master romancist. May there not be true love for beautiful Sophy Western, even though there has been—before, or after, or the while—some dalliance with naughty Molly Seagrim? "All men are beasts!" says a single lady of great age whom it is my privilege to know. The criticism is severe: but, at least, men are mortal—the leaven of fallibility is very strong in them; they may come down now and then from the pedestals on which they are often mounted in books; but there is good in them, too, and virtue and bravery and truth. We need not be always pointing to the blue vein in the marble; we need not insist that all coats should be worn with the seamy side out; let us believe in heroes and heroines, though they eat mutton-chops like other people, and in their loves and their love-letters, though perhaps the love has passed from these last, like the scent from the paper, and the hands that penned them may be churchyard dust. Do we admire lovely woman the less for knowing that she wears frisettes in her hair and crinoline? No. Perhaps the more for these evidences of her mortality. We should be frightened at her very likely if she were really an angel, all our talk to her on the subject to the contrary notwithstanding.
I have digressed. I know it. This chapter is much by way of entr'acte. For there is a lapse of time here in the story, and the months are fleeting as I write. A convenient opportunity seemed to offer for pause and a word or two upon the present view of sentiment, especially as this is not quite in accordance with certain notions contained in this story and set forth in a measure by its characters. They, be it said, believe in love, as did the world, I think, before perhaps matrimony, the climax of love, was, to use a vulgarism, "blown upon" by the Divorce Court. And I wanted to set out here two letters, out of many that about this time passed between Wilford Hadfield and Violet Fuller; and it seemed to me, regard being had to the prevalency of certain opinions, that it behoved me to prepare the mind of the reader for the reception of these documents. I wanted, in fact, to avoid the accustomed roar when love-letters are tendered as evidence in a case.
The letters are very simple, yet full, as it seems to me, of a great affection, of a deep tenderness; there is no effort in them, no desire to attitudinise in them on the part of the writers, and so delude each other after the manner of people who don't love. I select them hap-hazard out of a heap. They are not written in the first burst of the discovery of passion, but later in the day, when they had taken that for granted and between them had established a firm substratum of love and faith to which it was hardly necessary for them further to refer.
"Plowden Buildings, Temple.
"My dearest Violet,
"What a relief it is to turn from my books and once more write to you! I look forward all through the day to this moment, and the harder I have toiled the better seems my claim to send you a long letter. Does not this act of letter-writing really bring us nearer together? I am sure I feel that the space between us is now, by some miles, less than what it was this morning. I seem to have travelled through my work, and so brought myself closer to you. Perhaps it is that I may now permit myself to think wholly and exclusively of you, and that my thoughts circle round you and draw you to me as I write. I hear your voice, I know its every charming accent. I look up and see your kind eyes. I stretch out my arms, and I fancy there is little to prevent my grasping your soft white hands. I almost think that if I were to pronounce your name aloud—'Violet!'—I should somehow hear your dear voice answer me. My heart beats quite noisily at the idea of such a thing. How I wish this were all so in reality! How I long to learn yet once more from your own lips that you love me! I can never tire of hearing you say those words. They can never seem monotonous to me—but always new, and beautiful, and magical. I am almost angry with each of your letters that does not contain them explicitly—implication is not sufficient. I should like the precise words written large at the beginning of each letter, and again large at the end. I think that would satisfy me. Oh! if you knew how happy the thought of your love makes me, Violet—what value it gives to my future—how great a change it has made in me in every way! I sometimes pause, wondering if all can be true. Is there this leaven of doubt about all joy? Do those who are happy always stop to question their position and plague themselves with inquiries? 'Is it real?—is it true? Will it last?' But I have been so well acquainted with misery I have, perhaps, bought a right to be incredulous about happiness.
"Do I weary you with all this? Pray forgive me if I do. Indeed I try to conquer all my doubts and misgivings. I try to forget. I try to look forward simply and trustingly. Yet in all my letters I feel there are many lines like those I have written above—made up of self-examinations and forebodings, which must give you pain to combat over and over again. But you always triumph, Violet—at any rate, for a long time—