as she "really" is. They see her losing her temper, see her dowdy and with a smirched face, see her sick at the stomach, see her mean and cattish and sulky. A husband with a restless wife should say to her lover: "Here, take her and keep her for two years, and you will be as little enchanted with her as I am." The poets are professional liars. The novelists at last are giving us the "truth" about the great romantic humbug.
Such is the procedure of monoptic naturalistic criticism.
Now let us re-examine our last case—with two eyes, if we possess them. What is the real truth about falling in love? Is that object which commands the adoration of a young man's heart a mere brain-begotten fantasy of his own? By no means. What one falls in love with is, in most cases, "real" enough, what there is of it. But what one falls in love with is only a careful selection from the miscellaneous qualities possessed by the beloved person. The romantic passion of youth is monoptic. It is bred of occasional meetings, of prearranged contacts, of intercourse in agreeable settings, under favorable lights, with the two actors bringing to each other the best of their gayety, the choicest extracts of their talk, the distilled cup of their emotions, the flower of their personalities, all heightened a bit in value by the intoxication of young kisses and embraces, yet it is all substantial; that with which we fall in love is real enough.
Yet in so far as these romantic youths are love
