You never are satisfied to do anything else in the slovenly way in which you make love.  I know a man who is just an ordinary man in everything else; but to see him drive a spirited horse is to know that he has the making of a good lover in him.  He is full of enthusiasm in studying his horse’s disposition.  He will interrupt the most interesting conversation to say, “There, Pet, that pile of stones won’t hurt you.  Go on, now, like the pretty little lady that you are.  Here’s a nice bit of road.  Hold your head up and just show what you can do.  That’s right.  That’s my beauty.  See how she reaches out.  Isn’t she handsome?  Quiet, now, Pet.  Take this hill easily.  We know you could keep up that pace for an hour, but you mustn’t tire yourself all out just because you have a willing spirit.  See her look around to see if I am pleased with her!” “Dear me, that’s nothing,” I said.  “Any woman would do as much, if you treated her that way.”  He is responsive, so he grinned appreciatively.  He spends hours studying that horse’s traits.  He is always saying that she won’t back, or that she hates this and is afraid of that.  His horse, never has to do anything that she doesn’t want to; but his wife does.

You men would not do business, or even play golf, without many times the thought you put into your love-making.  Of course, now, I am not talking of the sleepless nights or the anxious days you spent before you knew whether she loved you.  No, indeed; you did enough thinking and worrying then to please anybody.  But I am referring to the girl to whom you are engaged, perhaps you are married to her, and have been for forty years.  You are not too old yet to know that you have not been a perfect lover.  I know that old story, that men are so fond of telling just here, about a man running for a car before he has caught it.  Yes, we know all that.  But we want you to keep on running.

However, on the other hand, I know that ideal love is a difficult thing to manage, from our point of view.  It is a fearful strain to live up to it.  In fact, nobody can do it.  But I never could see why you had to stick to one or the other.  Why can’t you mix the two?

Ideal love is a beautiful thing to think about or to live in for a few weeks or months—­according to your temperament.  It cannot be equalled for the first part of an engagement or the honeymoon.  But it is like going to the theatre and seeing the grandeur of the old gray castle, and the perpetual moonlight, and the devoted love of the satin duchess for the velvet duke.  You know that it is just acting, and that the villain is not really going to swim the moat with his band of steel warriors, and burn the castle, and capture the duchess and marry her by force.  Yet I love to pretend.  I dearly love to take two pocket-handkerchiefs with me and sop them both—­and I would like to cry out loud, only I never do; but I always have to pull my veil down and feel my way out of the theatre.  I love to throw myself into it, and it always annoys me when the acting is so bad that I cannot.  If any man sees any moral in that, let him heed it, and believe that I am only one of ten thousand other girls who would like to throw ourselves into the illusion of it only your acting is so bad that we cannot.