It should be noted that the discredit of a second marriage or the lesser discredit of contracting a second betrothal does not attach to the woman only. But a man is in practice more at liberty than a woman to consult his own inclinations. The young widower who refrains from a second marriage after his wife's death is regarded as deserving of the greatest praise and respect, but if he is childless he is in the dilemma of having to be either unfaithful to the memory of his wife or undutiful towards his parents and ancestors; and as the parents "count" more than the wife in China he must choose to be unfaithful rather than undutiful. It is an important part of Chinese teaching that the most unfilial of sons is he who has no children: the reason being, of course, that childlessness means the extinction of the family and the cessation of the ancestral sacrifices. Thus a childless widower not only may, but must, seek a second marriage, especially if he has no married brothers. A common way out of the difficulty is for the widower to take a concubine: for the concubine's position in China is a perfectly legal one, and her children, as we have seen, are legitimate. After all, it is perhaps impossible for any European mind to understand the real nature of the impulse that occasionally drives a Chinese girl to kill herself on the death of an unknown betrothed; not indeed because the occidental mind is essentially different from the oriental, but because of the unbridged chasm that lies between the social, religious and ethical systems and traditions of East and West. Considerations of this kind should perhaps teach us something of the limitations of our minds and characters, by showing how comparative a thing is our boasted independence of thought, and with what humiliating uniformity our ideals and impulses are conditioned by the social and traditional surroundings in which we live and move. However this may be, it will perhaps be comforting to know that the Chinese, unsentimental as they are in their methods of courtship, are no strangers to what in Europe we recognise as the romance of love.