To another woman, love is as the rising of a star:  a fresh one may appear every hour of her life, and nor she nor her world is one whit affected by its rays.  Indeed, one would hardly err if he said that

Many a woman really does not know whether she is “in love” or not.  She is sought—­that she perceives; but which of her seekers is worthiest, which most zealous, which merely takes her fancy, and which appeals to her heart—­on these matters she meditates long—­to the exasperation, of course, of the individual seeker.  Accordingly,

Men, carried away by their own passionate impulse, detest calculation of the part of women: 

Since he stakes his all on impulse in the matter of love, says man, why should woman stay to consider?  Foolish man! he forgets that

A woman always weighs a man’s declaration of love—­and legitimately—­ and naturally; perhaps legitimately because naturally; for, once again,

What a woman stays to consider in the matter of love is, not the potency of the impulse of the moment, but the permanent efficacy of the emotion.  Therefore it is that

Woman unwittingly obeys great Nature’s laws.

* * *

Many imagine that love is a thing like a chemical element:  with a fixed symbol 84 and a rigid atomic equivalent.  And so it may be; but, like the philosopher’s stone, hitherto it has defied detection in its elemental form.  The fact is probably that

Love may be compared to a substance that is never found free, and which not only combines in all sorts of relationships with all sorts of substances, but also, like many another chemical body, takes on the most varied forms, not only in these relationships, but also under varying pressures and temperatures.—­Or perhaps it would be better to say that

Love may be compared to a musical note:  to the unthinking it is a simple sound; to the more experienced it is know to consist of endless and complicated harmonical vibrations; harmonizing with some, and making discord with other, notes by regular but unknown laws; differing according to the timbre of the emitter; reverberating under certain conditions; lost to the ear in others; and only responding to resonators vibrating synchronously with itself.  Lastly,

There is a whole gamut of love.—­Changing that simile, we may say that

Love is not like the sun:  a unit, and practically the same wherever seen; it is like light:  all-pervading, universally diffused, and reflected and refracted and absorbed in varying degrees and varying manners by various objects.  And

Than a great and pure love, can anyone point to anything on earth greater and more purifying?

The lesser luminary perturbs the tide of human passion; the greater light draws it upward—­none the less veritably because in tinted formless vapor.  This is symbolical of love.

It is the nascent thing that evokes the keenest emotions:  the bud—­the babe—­dawn—­and the first beginnings of love.  So Love, like sun-light, wears its most tender tints at dawn.