Why did she not use the freedom they had granted her?  Why did she not take a husband?  Why did she not make her choice?  Did she not know that she was perfectly independent in this matter, that whatever her choice, it would be approved, for it was sure to be good?  They had sent her to town, but she would not stay; many suitors had offered themselves, but she would have none of them.  What did she expect?  What did she want?  What an inexplicable contradiction?

The reply was simple.  If it were only a question of the partner of her youth, her choice would soon be made; but a master for life is not so easily chosen; and since the two cannot be separated, people must often wait and sacrifice their youth before they find the man with whom they could spend their life.  Such was Sophy’s case; she wanted a lover, but this lover must be her husband; and to discover a heart such as she required, a lover and husband were equally difficult to find.  All these dashing young men were only her equals in age, in everything else they were found lacking; their empty wit, their vanity, their affectations of speech, their ill-regulated conduct, their frivolous imitations alike disgusted her.  She sought a man and she found monkeys; she sought a soul and there was none to be found.

“How unhappy I am!” said she to her mother; “I am compelled to love and yet I am dissatisfied with every one.  My heart rejects every one who appeals to my senses.  Every one of them stirs my passions and all alike revolt them; a liking unaccompanied by respect cannot last.  That is not the sort of man for your Sophy; the delightful image of her ideal is too deeply graven in her heart.  She can love no other; she can make no one happy but him, and she cannot be happy without him.  She would rather consume herself in ceaseless conflicts, she would rather die free and wretched, than driven desperate by the company of a man she did not love, a man she would make as unhappy as herself; she would rather die than live to suffer.”

Amazed at these strange ideas, her mother found them so peculiar that she could not fail to suspect some mystery.  Sophy was neither affected nor absurd.  How could such exaggerated delicacy exist in one who had been so carefully taught from her childhood to adapt herself to those with whom she must live, and to make a virtue of necessity?  This ideal of the delightful man with which she was so enchanted, who appeared so often in her conversation, made her mother suspect that there was some foundation for her caprices which was still unknown to her, and that Sophy had not told her all.  The unhappy girl, overwhelmed with her secret grief, was only too eager to confide it to another.  Her mother urged her to speak; she hesitated, she yielded, and leaving the room without a word, she presently returned with a book in her hand.  “Have pity on your unhappy daughter, there is no remedy for her grief, her tears cannot be dried.  You would know the cause:  well, here it is,” said she, flinging the book on the table.  Her mother took the book and opened it; it was The Adventures of Telemachus.  At first she could make nothing of this riddle; by dint of questions and vague replies, she discovered to her great surprise that her daughter was the rival of Eucharis.