Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/165

 we acquire the unjust habit of judging real women by her spectral standard; and the real always suffer for the ideal. So that when the fancy of a home and children—smiling faces, comfort, and a woman's friendship, the idea of something real to love and be loved by—comes to the haunted man in hours of disgust with the world and weariness of its hollow mockeries,—the Woman that he shall never know stands before him like a ghost with sweet sad eyes of warning,—and he dare not!