Yet chance has only to place Esther and Mike, and Angelica and
Henry in the same room together for less than a minute of time, and they
fly into the arms of each other's souls with an instant recognition.
This is a mystery which it will take more than biology to explain.
A young man's dreams of the woman he will some day marry are apt to be
meretricious, or at all events conventional. A young poet, especially,
is likely to err in the direction of paragons of beauty, or fame, or
romance. Perhaps he dreams of a great singer, or an illustrious beauty,
ignorant of the natural law which makes great singers and illustrious
beauties, in common with all artists, incapable of loving really any one
but themselves. Or perhaps it will be some woman of great and exquisite
culture. But chance knows that women of great and exquisite culture are
usually beings lacking in those plastic elemental qualities which a
poet, above all men, needs in the woman he shall love. Their very
culture, while it may seem to broaden, really narrows them, limits them
to a caste of mind, and, for an infinite suggestiveness, substitutes a
few finite accomplishments.
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