THE AUSTINS Iv 



mate ; and he must in part deserve her, or the treasure is but 

 won for a moment to be lost. Fleeming chanced if you will (and 

 indeed all these opportunities are as ' random as blind man's 

 buff') upon a wife who was worthy of him; but he had the wit 

 to know it, the courage to wait and labour for his prize, and the 

 tenderness and chivalry that are required to keep such prizes 

 precious. Upon this point he has himself written well, as usual 

 with fervent optimism, but as usual (in his own phrase) with a 

 truth sticking in his head. 



' Love,' he wrote, is not an intuition of the person most 

 suitable to us, most required by us ; of the person with whom 

 life flowers and bears fruit. If this were so, the chances of our 

 meeting that person would be small indeed ; our intuition would 

 often fail ; the blindness of love would then be fatal as it is 

 proverbial. No, love works differently, and in its blindness lies 

 its strength. Man and woman, each strongly desires to be loved ? 

 each opens to the other that heart of ideal aspirations which 

 they have often hid till then ; each, thus knowing the ideal of 

 the other, tries to fulfil that ideal, each partially succeeds. The 

 greater the love, the greater the success ; the nobler the idea 

 of each, the more durable, the more beautiful the effect. Mean- 

 while the blindness of each to the other's defects enables the 

 transformation to proceed [unobserved,] so that when the veil is 

 withdrawn (if it ever is, and this I do not know) neither knows 

 that any change has occurred in the person whom they loved. 

 Do not fear, therefore. I do not tell you that your friend will 

 not change, but as I am sure that her choice cannot be that of 

 a man with a base ideal, so I am sure the change will be a safe 

 and a good one. Do not fear that anything you love will vanish, 

 he must love it too.' 



Among other introductions in London, Fleeming had pre- The 

 sented a letter from Mrs. Gaskell to the Alfred Austins. This Austins - 

 was a family certain to interest a thoughtful young man. 

 Alfred, the youngest and least known of the Austins, had been 

 a beautiful golden-haired child, petted and kept out of the way 

 of both sport and study by a partial mother. Bred an attorney, 

 he had (like both his brothers) changed his way of life, and 



