After the door of a woman’s heart has once swung on its silent hinges, a man thinks he can prop it open with a brick and go away and leave it.  A storm is apt to displace the brick, however—­and there is a heavy spring on the door.  Woe to the masculine finger that is in the way!

A man often hesitates between two young women and asks his friends which he shall marry.  Custom has permitted the courtship of both and neither has the right to feel aggrieved, because it is exceedingly bad form for a girl to love a man before he has asked her to.

Now and then a third girl is a man’s confidante at this trying period.  Nothing so bores a person as to be a man’s “guide, philosopher and friend” in his perplexities with other girls.  To one distinct class of women men tell their troubles and the other class sees that they have plenty to tell.  It is better to be in the second category than in the first.

Sooner or later, the confidante explains the whole affair to the subjects of the confidence and strange, new kinds of trouble immediately come to the rash man.  It is a common failing to expect another person to keep a secret which we have just proved is beyond our own capability.

[Sidenote:  The Adamantine Fortress]

When a man has once deeply wounded a woman’s pride, he may just as well give up his hope of winning her.  At that barrier, the little blind god may plead in vain.  Love’s face may be sad, his big, sightless eyes soft with tears, and his helpless hands outstretched in pleading and prayer, but that stern sentinel will never yield.  Wounded love is easily forgiven, wounded belief sometimes forgotten, but wounded pride—­never.  It is the adamantine fortress.  There is only one path which leads to the house of forgiveness—­that of understanding, and it is impassable if woman’s pride has come between.

A girl never knows whether a courtship is in progress or not, unless a man tells her.  He may be interested and amused, but not in love.  It is only in the comic papers that a stern parent waits upon the continuous caller and demands to know his “intentions,” so a girl must, perforce, be her own guide.

[Sidenote:  The Continuous Caller]

A man may call upon a girl so constantly and so regularly that the neighbours daily expect wedding invitations, and the family inquire why he does not have his trunk sent to the house.  Later, quite casually, he will announce his engagement to a girl who is somewhere else.  This fiancee is always a peculiarly broad-minded girl who knows all about her lover’s attentions to the other and does not in the least object.  She wants him to “have a good time” when he is away from her, and he is naturally anxious to please her.  He wants the other girl to know his wife—­he is sure they will be good friends.

Lasting feminine friendships are not built upon foundations of that kind.  It is very unfortunate, for the world would be gladdened by many more than now exist.