Because she herself works indirectly, she thinks he intends a tender look at another girl for a carom shot, and frequently a far-sighted maiden can see the evidences of a consuming passion for herself in a man’s devotion to someone else.

Men are not sufficiently diplomatic to bother with finesse of this kind.  Other things being equal, a man goes to see the girl he wants to see.  It does not often occur to her that he may not want to see her, may be interested in someone else, or that he may have forgotten all about her.

[Sidenote:  “Encouragement”]

There is a common feminine delusion to the effect that men need “encouragement” and there is no term which is more misused.  A fool may need “encouragement,” but the man who wants a girl will go after her, regardless of obstacles.  As for him, if he is fed at her house, even irregularly, he may know that she looks with favour upon his suit.

[Sidenote:  “Platonic Friendship”]

The parents of both, the neighbours, and even the girl herself, usually know that a man is in love before he finds it out.  Sometimes he has to be told.  He has approached a stage of acute and immediate peril when he recognises what he calls “a platonic friendship.”

Young men believe platonic friendship possible; old men know better—­but when one man learns to profit by the experience of another, we may look for mosquitoes at Christmas and holly in June.

There is an exquisite danger attached to friendships of this kind, and is it not danger, rather than variety, which is “the spice of life?” Relieved of the presence of that social pace-maker, the chaperone, the disciples of Plato are wont to take long walks, and further on, they spend whole days in the country with book and wheel.

A book is a mysterious bond of union, and by their taste in books do a man and woman unerringly know each other.  Two people who unite in admiration of Browning are apt to admire each other, and those who habitually seek Emerson for new courage may easily find the world more kindly if they face it hand in hand.

A latter-day philosopher has remarked upon the subtle sympathy produced by marked passages.  “The method is so easy and so unsuspect.  You have only to put faint pencil marks against the tenderest passages in your favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has only to leave here and there the dropped violet of a timid, confirmatory initial, for you to know your fate.”

[Sidenote:  The High-Priest]

A man never has a platonic friendship with a woman it is impossible for him to love.  Cupid is the high-priest at these rites of reading aloud and discussing everything under the sun.  The two become so closely bound that one arrow strikes both, and often the happiest marriages are those whose love has so begun, for when the Great Passion dies, as it sometimes does, sympathy and mutual understanding may yield a generous measure of content.