“I showed him how he was throwing away into the ashes his best affections—­how the common gifts of youth and cheerfulness were behind me—­how I had not strength, even of heart, for the ordinary duties of life—­everything I told him and showed him.  ’Look at this—­and this—­and this,’ throwing down all my disadvantages.  To which he did not answer by a single compliment, but simply that he had not then to choose, and that I might be right or he might be right, he was not there to decide; but that he loved me and should to his last hour.  He said that the freshness of youth had passed with him also, and that he had studied the world out of books and seen many women, yet had never loved one until he had seen me.  That he knew himself, and knew that, if ever so repulsed, he should love me to his last hour—­it should be first and last.”

No poet understood better than Tennyson that purity is an ingredient of love: 

             For indeed I know
     Of no more subtle master under heaven
     Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
     Not only to keep down the base in man,
     But teach high thoughts and amiable words,
     And courtliness, and the desire of fame
     And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

MAIDEN FANCIES

Bryan Waller Proctor fell in love when he was only five years old:  “My love,” he wrote afterward, “had the fire of passion, but not the clay which drags it downward; it partook of the innocence of my years, while it etherealized me.”

Such ethereal love too is the prerogative of a young maiden, whose imagination is immaculate, ignorant of impurity.

     Her feelings have the fragrancy,
     The freshness of young flowers.

     No, no, the utmost share
       Of my desire shall be,
     Only to kiss that air
       That lately kissed thee.

In high school, when sentimental impulses first manifest themselves in a girl, she is more likely than not to transfer them to a girl.  Her feelings, in these cases, are not merely those of a warm friendship, but they resemble the passionate, self-sacrificing attitude of romantic love.  New York schoolgirls have a special slang phrase for this kind of love—­they call it a “crush,” to distinguish it from a “mash,” which refers to an impression made on a man.  A girl of seventeen told me one day how madly she was in love with another girl whose seat was near hers; how she brought her flowers, wiped her pens, took care of her desk; “but I don’t believe she cares for me at all,” she added, sadly.

PATHOLOGIC LOVE

Such love is usually as innocent as a butterfly’s flirtation with a flower.[42] It has a pathologic phase, in some cases, which need not be discussed here.  But I wish to call attention to the fact that even in abnormal states modern love preserves its purity.  The most eminent authority on mental pathology, Professor Krafft-Ebing, says, concerning erotomania: