What is usually considered the greatest mystery of the amorous passion is the disposition of a lover to "see Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt." "What can Jack have seen in Jill to become infatuated with her, or she in him?" The trouble with those who so often ask this question is that they fix the attention on the beloved instead of on the lover, whose lack of taste explains everything. The error is of long standing, as the following story related by the Persian poet Saadi (of the thirteenth century) will show (346): AN ORIENTAL LOVE-STORY "A king of Arabia was told that Mujnun, maddened by love, had turned his face toward the desert and assumed the manners of a brute. The king ordered him to be brought in his presence and he wept and said: 'Many of my friends reproach me for my love of her, namely Laila; alas! that they could one day see her, that my excuse might be manifest for me.' The king sent for her and beheld a person of tawny complexion, and feeble frame of body. She appeared to him in a contemptible light, inasmuch as the lowest menial in his harem, or seraglio, surpassed her in beauty and excelled her in elegance. Mujnun, in his sagacity, penetrated what was passing in the king's mind and said: 'It would behove you, O King, to contemplate the charms of Laila through the wicket of a Mujnun's eye, in order that the miracle of such a spectacle might be illustrated to you.'" This story was referred to by several critics of my first book as refuting my theory regarding the modernity of true love. They seemed to think, with the Persian poet, that there must be something particularly wonderful and elevated in the feelings of a lover who is indifferent to the usual charms of femininity and prefers ugliness. This, indeed, is the prevalent sentiment on the subject, though the more I think of it, the more absurd and topsy turvy it seems to me. Do we commend an Eskimo for preferring the flavor of rancid fish oil to the delicate bouquet of the finest French wine? Does it evince a particularly exalted artistic sense to prefer a hideous daub to a Titian or Raphael? Does it betoken a laudable and elevated taste in music to prefer a vulgar tune to one that has the charms of a romantic or classical work of acknowledged beauty? Why, then, should we specially extol Mujnun for admiring a woman who was devoid of all feminine charms? The confusion probably arises from fancying that she must have had mental charms to offset her ugliness, but nothing whatever is said about such a notion, which, in fact, would have been utterly foreign to the Oriental, purely sensual, way of regarding women.