The pain which lovers cause each other—through fickleness, languidness, jealousy, and the thousand natural shocks that love is heir to—is not altogether pain, though at the moment it may seem the most poignant anguish the human soul could suffer. One proof of this lies in the fact that
There are few who would choose to have missed love's pangs altogether.
Perhaps the pleasure intermixed with love's pangs arises from the thought that the other is the cause of our suffering. For,
In all love, it is the sacrifice of oneself for the other that brings keenest joy. And yet
There is an element of self-love in the very extremest of love. Since
Love, after all, is a debtor and creditor affair. (Who ever loved with no hope of return?) It is when one of the parties declares him-or her-self insolvent that the account is closed—with many tears and sighs on the part of the chief creditor. At all events
The intenser the love, the more flawless does its object appear. For
The surest test of the sincerity of love is that it thinketh no evil.
The surest test of a waning love is that it begins not to content itself when it sees its object suffer.
The surest test of a dead love is that it forgets how to be jealous.