late have been devouring our damsels, nor yet the inexpressive and unmodified vestryman whom you commended to our admiration this morning, but rather a youth who should have a bit of the old bachelor's conception of what might be in the relation—an old bachelor, I mean, who had known in his own youth, an exquisite lady."
"Why lug in the old bachelor?" Cornelia asked—a little cruelly; for we were already at her door.
"Because," I said, as she waited on the step for my leave-taking, "because time and meditation and the naturalistic novelists have convinced him that, almost without a pang, he may resign to Mr. O'Grady and the Colonel the similarities of Judith and the lady, provided only that, from time to time, he may refresh his memory and his senses with the lady's differences."
"Meaning—"
"Why, meaning that the kind of man whom a girl like Dorothy should choose should know that the passion hymned by the naturalists is naught, sheer naught—"
"You really mean that?"
"—in comparison with the quality of love to be had in its high moments of general joyous awareness of the entire radiant life of a fellow
