It is a trite saying that the whole world is behind a woman urging her to marry.  But I find much to interest me in trite sayings.  I like to get hold of them, and look them through, and turn them wrong side out, and pull them to pieces to find how much life there is in them.  Psychological vivisection is not a subject for the humane society.  A trite saying has my sympathy.  It generally is stupid and shop-worn, and consequently is banished to polite society and hated by the clever.  And only because it possessed a soul of truth and a wonderful vitality has it been kept from dying long ago of a broken heart.

Books could be written of the truth of this particular trite saying.  The urging, of course, among people whom we know, is neither vulgar nor intentional.  It takes the form of jests, of pseudo-humorous questions if a man sends flowers two or three times.  But it takes its worst and most common form in the sudden melting away of the family if the man calls and finds them all together.  If a man has no specific intentions towards a girl, and has not determined in his own mind that he wants to marry her; if he is only liking her a great deal, with but an occasional wonder in the depths of his own heart whether this girl is the wife for him; to call upon her casually and see the family scatter, and other callers hastily leave, is enough to scare him to death.  And the girl herself has a right to be furiously indignant.  When eligible young people are in that tentative stage, it is death to a love to make them self-conscious.

I myself am so afraid of brushing the down from the butterfly wings at this point that, occasionally, when I have been calling, and the girl’s possible lover has caught me before I could escape in a natural manner, I have doggedly remained, even knowing that perhaps he wished me well away among the angels, rather than to run the risk of making him conscious that I understood his state of mind.  Imagine my feelings of anguish, however, at holding on against my will and against theirs, wanting somebody to help me let go!  Much better, I solace myself afterwards, that he should wish me away than to look after my retreating form and wish, in Heaven’s name, that I had stayed!  Better for the girl, I mean.  For my own feelings—­but I do not count.  I am only giving a girl one of her rights in love.  A few judicious obstacles but whet a man’s appetite—­if he is worth having.  And I do not mind being a judicious obstacle once in a while—­if I like the girl.

As to how far a girl has a right to encourage a man in love, opinions differ.  I once asked a clever literary friend of mine, whose husband is so satisfactory that it is quite a delightful shock to discover it, how far men ought to be encouraged to make love.

“Encourage them all you can, my dear.  The best of men require all the encouragement one is capable of giving them.”

I pondered over that statement.  From her point of view it was, of course, perfectly proper.  Married men need all the encouragement they can get to keep them making love to their own wives.  But from our standpoint, of being girls—­and very nice girls too, some of us, if I do say it myself!—­how far have we a right to encourage men to make love to us?