All the beauty in woman’s life is forever associated with her love.  Violets bring the memory of dead days, when the boy-lover brought them to her in fragrant heaps.  Some women say man’s love is selfish, but there is no one among them who has ever been loved by a boy.

[Sidenote:  Some Lost Song]

Broken, hesitant chords set some lost song to singing in her heart.  The break in her lover’s voice is like another, long ago.  Summer days and summer fields, silver streams, and clouds of apple blossoms set against the turquoise sky, bring back the Mays of childhood and all the childish dreams.

This is another thing a man cannot understand—­that every little tenderness of his wakes the memory of all past tenderness, and for that very reason is often doubly sweet.  This is the explanation of sudden sadness, of the swift succession of moods, and of lips, shut on sobs, that sometimes quiver beneath his own.

Woman keeps alive the old ideals.  Were it not for her eager efforts, chivalry would have died long ago.  King Arthur’s Court is said to be a myth, and Lancelot and Guenevere were only dreams, but the knightly spirit still lives in man’s love for woman.

[Sidenote:  The Lady of the Court]

The Lady of the Court was wont to send her knight into danger at her sweet, capricious will.  Her glove upon his helmet, her scarf upon his arm, her colours on his shield—­were they worth the risk of horse and spear?  Yet the little that she gave him, made him invincible in the field.

To-day there is a subtle change.  She is loved as dearly as was Guenevere, but she gives him neither scarf nor glove.  Her love in his heart is truly his shield and his colours are the white of her soul.

He needs no gage but her belief, and having that, it is a trust only a coward will betray.  The battle is still to the strong, but just as surely her knight comes back with his shield untarnished, his colours unstained, and his heart aglow with love of her who gave him courage.

The centuries have brought new striving, which the Lady of the Court could never know.  The daughter of to-day endeavours to be worthy of the knightly worship—­to be royal in her heart and queenly in her giving; to be the exquisitely womanly woman he sees behind her faulty clay, so that if the veil of illusion he has woven around her should ever fall away, the reality might be even fairer than his dream.

Through the sombre pages of history the knights and ladies move, as though woven in the magic web of the Lady of Shalott.  Tournament and shield and spear, the Round Table and Camelot, have taken on the mystery of fables and dreams.

[Sidenote:  By Grace of Magic]

Yet, by the grace of magic, the sweet old story lives to-day, unforgotten, because of its single motive.  Elaine still dies for love of Lancelot, Isolde urges Tristram to new proofs of devotion, and Guenevere, the beautiful, still shares King Arthur’s throne.  For chivalry is not dead—–­ it only sleeps—­and the nobleness and valour of that far-off time are ever at the service of her who has found her knight.