Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/139

 and I admit, moreover, that if as frail mortals we have been true-hearted in that way, assuredly we shall not be less, but rather more so, when we become immortals. So far you and I are agreed; but you must see, nevertheless, that your contention as regards fidelity to the individual cuts both ways. If it establishes on the one hand that true love is for old companions, not new charmers, it surely implies on the other hand that such love should endure through any conceivable change in the personal appearance of the loved one. It should endure even through a change for the worse; how much more, then, through a change for the better! And, as a matter of fact, it does endure through change. Does not every mother’s son change his personality, to all intents and purposes, with his growth? What resemblance can a mother pretend there is between the boy of four who sat on her knee and the man of forty who brings her grandchildren to see her? The identity of the son is little more than nominal, yet the maternal affection, as a rule, endures. And so with husband and wife; does not your ‘auld lang syne’ represent a great change in both? ‘We twa hae run aboot the braes,’ etc. etc., in what respect does their old age resemble that time? Their affection is for a personality which endures through change, not for an unchanged personality. I maintain, therefore, that the constancy of good women’s love is a guarantee of its continuance, and of its increase too, for the quondam male partner who in the hereafter shall have cast his slough and returned into the Image of God, retaining only that which was pure in his former state.

‘But it stands to reason, from the analogies of natural evolution, that such upward change can only be for those who have striven upwards sincerely. They, for instance of the contrary, who, by wilfully opposing the elevation of womanhood upon earth, have done what in them lies to