Divine, human, or otherwise, love affairs are peculiar to observe. They receive their directions from an unknown world and perform for us, even when they are our own, from some cunning and outlandish script whose droll author is concerned with an audience alien to this planet. There is the story of a peacock which fell in love with a great turtle; and it followed that no peahen, regardless of her handsomeness, the sweetness of her mien, her congenial disposition, could arouse that wonderful tail. Only the creaking approach of the hideous, moss-covered shell caused its fierce beauty to unfold.
And you and I, my sweet, are no more exempt from the tyranny of love’s laws than the peacock. One man may love a Dunbarton oak, for example; another, otters; many love power; and a woman may love anything, a mood, a mountain, a rascal a bank account, a pot of geraniums or a whole nation of fools. Regardless of the shape of it, the thing we love is that which causes us to spread our beauties to view; to exhibit our hidden splendors. Often less magnificent than the peacock’s tail, still, each of us has a hidden glory and it remains only for events, no matter how clumsy and unlovely, to startle us into this glory; it remains, too, only for the human heart to desire it, to demand an event, and behold, it trundles out of the bushes and we are transformed.
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