And yet—there is no more dangerous companion for a woman than the man who has loved her. It is easier to waken a woman's old love than to teach her a new affection. Strangely enough, the woman a man has once loved and then forgotten is powerless in the after years. A man's dead friendship may dream of resurrection, but never his dead love.
Jealousy and distrust have never yet won a doubting heart. Bitterness never accomplishes miracles which sweetness fails to do. Too often men and women spend their time in wondering why they are not loved, trying various schemes and pitiful experiments, and passing by the simple method of trying to be lovable and unconscious of self.
"The Milk of Human Kindness"
"The milk of human kindness" seldom produces cream, but there is only one way by which love may be won or kept. Perfection means a continual shifting of standards and must ever be unattainable, but the man or woman who is simply lovable will be wholly taken into other hearts—faults and all.
Now and then a man's love is hopeless, from causes which are innate and beyond control. Sometimes regret strikes deep and lasts for more than a day, as in the pages of the story books which women love to read. Sometimes, too, a tender-hearted woman, seeing far into the future, will do her best to spare a fellow-creature pain.
The Wine of Conquest
But this is the exception, rather than the rule. The average woman regards a certain number of proposals as but a just tribute to her own charm. Sometimes she sees what she has unconsciously done when it is too late to retreat, but even then, though pity, regret, and honest pain may result from it, there is one effect more certain still—the intoxication of the wine of conquest, against which no woman is proof.