Now some explanation is due for all this behavior. The time has e to speak about love. For Miss Amelia loved Cousin Lymon. So much was clear to everyohey lived in the same house together and were never seen apart. Therefore, acc to Mrs. MacPhail, a warty-nosed old busybody who is tinually moviicks of furniture from one part of the front room to another; acc to her and to certain others, these two were living in sin. If they were related, they were only a cross between first and sed cousins, and even that could in no way be proved. Now, of course, Miss Amelia owerful blunderbuss of a person, more than six feet tall -- and Cousin Lymon a weakly little hunchback reag only to her waist. But so much the better for Mrs. Stumpy MacPhail and her ies, for they and their kind glory in juns which are ill-matched and pitiful. So let them be. The good people thought that if those two had found some satisfa of the flesh between themselves, then it was a matter ing them and God alone. All sensible people agreed in their opinion about this jecture -- and their answer lain, flat top. What sort of thing, then, was this love?
First of all, love is a joint experieween two persons -- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experieo the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two e from different tries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He es to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only ohing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he ; he must create for himself a whole new inward world -- a world intense and strange, plete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring -- this lover be man, woman, child, or indeed any humaure on this earth.
Now, the beloved also be of any description. The most outlandish people be the stimulus for love. A man may be a d great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw ireets of Cheehaw oernoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as dearly as anyone else -- but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, aiful as the poison lilies of the s. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someoender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being be loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience cause him only pain.
It has beeioned before that Miss Amelia was once married. And this curious episode might as well be ated for at this point Remember that it all happened long