He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him and am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities.  He he were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should love him; and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until I died.

Yes, I think I love him merely because he is mine and is masculine.  There is no other reason, I suppose.  And so I think it is as I first said:  that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and statistics.  It just comes—­none knows whence—­and cannot explain itself.  And doesn’t need to.

It is what I think.  But I am only a girl, the first that has examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience I have not got it right.

Forty Years Later

It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together—­a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.

But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me—­life without him would not be life; now could I endure it?  This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues.  I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be repeated.

At Eve’s Grave

Adam:  Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.