And yet love
faces the fears, not only of hours, but of weeks and months; weeks and
months on seas bottomless with danger, in lands rife with unknown evils,
dizzily taking the chances of desperate occupations. And the courage is
the greater, because, finally, in this world, love alone has anything to
lose. Other losses may be more or less repaired; but love's loss is, of
its essence, irreparable. Other fair faces and brave hearts the world
may bring us, but never that one face! Alas! for the most precious of
earthly things, the only precious thing of earth, there is no system of
insurance. The many waters have quenched love, and the floods drowned
it,--yet in the wide world is there no help, no hope, no recompense.
The love that bound this little circle of young people together was so
strong and warm that it had developed in them an almost painful
sensibility to such risks of loss. So it was that expressions of
affection and outward endearments were more current among them than is
usual in a land where manners, from a proper fear of exaggeration, run
to a silly extreme of unresponsiveness.
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