FALLING IN LOVE 7 



definitely seek out and discover such qualities ; instinct works 

 far more intuitively than that ; but we find at last, by sub- 

 sequent observation, how true and how trustworthy were 

 its immediate indications. That is to say, those men do so 

 who were wise enough or fortunate enough to follow the 

 earliest promptings of their own hearts, and not to be 

 ashamed of that divinest and deepest of human intuitions^ 

 love at first sight. 



How very subtle this intuition is, we can only guess in 

 part by the apparent capriciousness and incomprehensibility 

 of its occasional action. We know that some men and 

 women fall in love easily, while others are only moved to 

 love by some very special and singular combination of 

 peculiarities. We know that one man is readily stirred by 

 every pretty face he sees, while another man can only be 

 roused by intellectual qualities or by moral beauty. We 

 know that sometimes we meet people possessing every 

 virtue and grace under heaven, and yet for some unknown 

 and incomprehensible reason we could no more fall in love 

 with them than we could fall in love with the Ten Com- 

 mandments. I don't, of course, for a moment accept the 

 silly romantic notion that men and women fall in love only 

 once in their lives, or that each one of us has some- 

 where on earth his or her exact affinity, whom we must 

 sooner or later meet or else die unsatisfied. Almost every 

 healthy normal man or woman has probably fallen in love 

 over and over again in the course of a hfetime (except in 

 case of very early marriage), and could easily find 

 dozens of persons with whom they would be capable of 

 falling in love again if due occasion ofiered. We are not 

 all created in pairs, like the Exchequer tallies, exactly 

 intended to fit into one another's minor idiosyncrasies. 

 Men and women as a rule very sensibly fall in love with 

 one another in the particular places and the particular 



