In spite of these considerations, most Western readers, whatever may be their views on the ethics of suicide, will probably confess themselves utterly unable to understand how a young betrothed girl can work herself into the state of intense emotional excitement which the act of self-destruction implies, merely as the result of the untimely death of the man to whom she happened to be engaged. The suicide of real widows, distracted with grief for the loss of a beloved husband, they can understand: but it cannot be love, and it can hardly be grief in the ordinary sense, that induces a Chinese girl to throw away her life when she hears of the decease of a young man with whom she has never exchanged a word and whose face perhaps she has never seen. It may be pointed out, in partial explanation of a phenomenon so strange to Western notions, that not only is a betrothal in China practically as binding as a marriage, but that marriage, and therefore the betrothal that precedes it, are according to Chinese belief founded on mysterious ante-natal causes. When the sceptical Englishman says jestingly that "marriages are made in heaven" he is giving expression to a theory that in China is held to be essentially true, though it is not expressed by the Chinese in exactly the same terms. The theory is independent of and perhaps older than Buddhism, though no doubt popular Buddhism has done a great deal to strengthen it; and it has certainly helped to keep the Chinese people satisfied with their traditional marriage customs, which, as every one knows, are quite independent of love-making. It is partly this theory that makes a Chinese woman contented and even happy in the contemplation of her approaching marriage to an unknown bridegroom, and often fixes in a girl's mind the idea that to give herself to any man other than her first betrothed, even if the latter died during the betrothal, would be as shameful a proceeding as to commit an act of unfaithfulness in wedlock. Probably it is only the fear of social disorder and many other practical inconveniences that have prevented the second betrothals and second marriages of women from being more severely discouraged by public opinion than is actually the case. The first are in ordinary practice passed over without comment, though the fact of the original betrothal is "hushed up," or is at least not talked of; the second are in many parts of China still regarded with austere disfavour, though circumstances such as extreme poverty may render them necessary. In any case, the girl who refuses a second betrothal is still honoured and respected just as if she were a widow who had virtuously refused a second marriage.