[Sidenote:  The Lover’s Devotion]

Thus it seems to women that men love spasmodically—­that the lover’s devotion is a series of unrelated acts based upon momentary impulse, rather than a steady purpose.  They forget that the heart may need more rest than the interval between beats.

[Sidenote:  Attraction and Repulsion]

If a man and woman who truly loved each other were cast away upon a desert island, he would tire of her long before she wearied of him.  The sequence of attraction and repulsion, the ultimate balance of positive and negative, are familiar electrical phenomena.  Is it unreasonable to suppose that the supreme form of attraction is governed by the same law?

Strong attractions frequently begin with strong repulsions, sometimes mutual, but more often on the part of the attracting force.  A man seldom develops a violent and inexplicable hatred for a woman and later finds that it has unaccountably changed to love.

Yet a woman often marries a man she has sincerely hated, and the explanation is simple enough, perhaps, for a woman never hates a man unless he is in some sense her master.  Love and hate are kindred passions with a woman and the depth of the one is the possible measure of the other.

She is wise who fully understands her weapon of coquetry.  She will send her lover from her at the moment his love is strongest, and he will often seek her in vain.  She will be parsimonious with her letters and caresses and thus keep her attraction at its height.  If he is forever unsatisfied, he will always be her lover, for satiety must precede repulsion.

No woman need fear the effect of absence upon the man who honestly loves her.  The needle of the compass, regardless of intervening seas, points forever toward the north.  Pitiful indeed is she who fails to be a magnet and blindly becomes a chain.

The age has brought with it woman’s desire for equality, at least in the matter of love.  She wishes to be as free to seek a man as he is to seek her—­to love him as freely and frankly as he does her.  Why should she withhold her lips after her heart has surrendered?  Why should she keep the pretence of coyness long after she has been won?

[Sidenote:  The Old, Old Law]

Far beneath the tinsel of our restless age lies the old, old law, and she who scorns it does so at the peril of all she holds most dear.  Legislation may at times be disobeyed, but never law, for the breaking brings swift punishment of its own.

Too often a generous-hearted woman makes the mistake of full revelation.  She wishes him to understand her every deed, her every thought.  Nothing is left to his imagination—­the innermost corners of her heart are laid bare.  Given the woman and the circumstances, he would infallibly know her action.  This is why the husbands of the “practical,” the “methodical,” and the “reasonable” women may be tender and devoted, but are never lovers after marriage.