More often than not, it is simply an idle flirtation, or, at the most, a passing fancy which the next week may prove transient and unreal.  The woman with the heartache will say, with wet eyes and quivering lips:  “I know, positively, that my husband has done nothing wrong.  I would go to the stake upon that belief.  He is only weak and foolish and a little vain, perhaps, and some day he will see his mistake, but I cannot bear to see him compromise himself and me in the eyes of the world.  Of course, I know,” she will say, proudly, “but there are others who do not,—­who are always ready to suspect,—­and I will not have them pity me!”

When nearly all the married friends a spinster has have come to her with the same story, the variations being individual and of slight moment, she begins to have serious doubts of matrimony as a satisfactory career.  Women who have been married five, ten, and even twenty years; women with children grown and whom the world counts safely and happily married, will sob bitterly in the embrace of the chosen girl friend.

[Sidenote:  Indifference]

Indifference is the only counsel one has to offer, but even so, it gradually becomes the first of the steppes upon the heart-way which lead to an emotional Siberia.

Of course there are women who are insanely jealous of their husbands, and, more rarely, men who are jealous of their wives.  Jealousy may be explained as innate vanity and selfishness or as a defect in temperament, but at any rate, it is a condition which is far past the theoretical stage.

It is hard for a spinster to understand why any woman should wish to hold a man against his will.  A dog who has to be kept chained, in order to be retained as a pet, is never a very satisfactory possession.  It seems natural to apply the same reasoning to human affairs, for surely no love is worth having which is not a free gift.

No girl would feel particularly flattered by a proposal, if it were put in this form:  “Will you marry me?  No one else will.”  Yet the same girl, married, would gladly take her husband to a desert island, that she might be sure of him forever.

[Sidenote:  Behind Prison Bars]

Love which needs to be put behind prison bars, that it may not escape, is not love, but attraction, fascination, or whatever the psychologists may please.  A man chooses his wife, not because there are no other women, but in spite of them.  It is a pathetic acknowledgment of his poor judgment, if he lets the world suspect that his choice was wrong.

There are some souls that hie them faraway from civilisation, to convents, monasteries, and western plains, that they may keep away from temptation.  In the same fashion, woman tries to isolate her lord and master.  If he meets women at all, they are those invisibly labeled “not dangerous.”

The world makes as many saints as sinners, and the man who needs to be kept away from any sort of temptation is weak indeed.  There are many of his kind, but he is the better man in the end who meets it face to face, fights with it like a soldier, and wins like a king.