In most cases this is because she surrounds his work with such affection that, when it is asked of her, she sacrifices to it her mother’s happiness in the spirit of Heloïse. And the more love is perfected, the more does woman thus learn to love her husband’s work as her child, while he, on the other hand, loves her work as his own. But it may also be for other reasons that a woman desires a man to keep his complete freedom; it may be, for instance, that he is the younger, or that she knows she cannot give him a child. Such unions are not unusual in Europe, unions by which two people long make their own lives and the lives of those about them richer. In such a case the woman transforms her motherliness into affection for the man. She gives the best of her powers of production for his use, so that he grows while she stops short. But she thereby enjoys the bliss of a mother with a child at her breast; as the mother feeds herself for the child, so does such a mistress seek the finest intellectual nourishment that she may afterwards impart it: she feels that she steals what she enjoys alone. Perhaps the legend of the pelican, which nourished its young with its own blood, would be a better symbol for these women, who must be prepared sooner or later to see the man choose the young bride who in every respect will answer to his longing. Cases like these, if any, verify Nietzsche’s words that “great love desires more than a return,” and that “it will create.” Here, if ever, woman’s nature reveals that its great genius is for love; that the higher a woman attains, the more certainly will her own honour, her own triumphs, her own future weigh lightly as a feather against the joy of being able to develop in all its fulness her great talent, that of loving. And when does she love more highly than in lavishing the whole superfluity of her developed feminine nature on the perfecting of her lover—for another woman? What every woman needs, in our time more than in any other, has been expressed by Ricarda Huch in these words: _Courage for one’s self, sympathy for others_. Courage for one’s own destiny; courage to bear it or break under it. But also courage to wait for, to choose one’s destiny. Sympathy with the many who have lacked one part or another of the new courage: boldness or vigilance or patience.