Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/308

294 maxims, worthy of the sacrifice I offered upon its altar, my life's happiness? Would it not have been a thousand times better for me if I had yielded?"

When the average girl shudders at the thought of such a fate and marries the first man who enters upon her horizon on matrimonial thoughts intent, without too much scrutiny of affections and affinities—is she not right? There are a hundred chances to one that the lot of the married woman is more peaceful and pleasant than that of the old maid. But the lie acted by the bride when she marries without love, does not go unavenged. She is neither a faithful wife nor a conscientious housekeeper. In her unsatisfied longing for love she listens continually to the voice of her heart, accepts its lightest and most indistinct whisper as the hoped-for announcement of passion, and throws herself into the arms of the first man who has been able to fill her empty mind for a moment. She soon recognizes her mistake and continues her search for the right one, sometimes closing her career by falling over the precipice into social ignominy. In a more favorable case she may be merely coquettish, without going so far as to break her marriage vows materially or. Her appreciation of the incompleteness of her life and the necessity of finding the missing part, the man destined by nature to supplement her and round her existence into completeness, these impulses may reveal themselves as semi-unconscious coquetry, which impels her to dress elegantly and attend the balls and evening entertainments where she meets strange men, to test her powers of attraction upon them and to experience theirs in return She is entirely wrapped up in herself, cares solely for her own interests and demands that life should only offer her personal pleasures. Her egotism makes it impossible for her husband to come within her sphere of vision, much less