The fact that, whereas in Romantic Love men are superior to women; in conjugal life, on the other hand, woman’s love is commonly much deeper and more lasting than man’s, indicates in itself that marriages are made or marred by women. (For the sake of the lovely alliteration some writers would have said—against their conscience—that “marriages are made or marred by men;” but alliteration will have to be ignored in this place in favour of facts.) Before marriage, women are more beautiful and fascinating than men, wherefore men love them more ardently than _they_ love the men. After marriage, it is the men who grow more beautiful, more manly, in body as well as in mind; hence it is but natural that their wives should love them more and more. So would wives be loved more and more if they did not so soon after thirty lose their physical charms, without trying, by reading books or at least the newspapers, to make themselves intellectual companions of their husbands, able to converse interestingly on various topics. The old excuse that motherhood inevitably lessens woman’s charms is all nonsense. Married women at thirty are almost always handsomer than old maids of thirty. Women grow stout and clumsy, or thin and faded so soon, not because they are mothers, but because they are indifferent to the laws of health; because they refuse to go out to get fresh air and exercise, which would preserve the freshness of their complexion, the graceful contours of their bodies, and the elasticity of their gait. The morbid fondness for a hot-house atmosphere, and the horror of fresh air, draughts, and vigorous exercise, have done more to shorten man’s Love and woman’s Beauty than all other causes combined. _The road to lasting Love is paved with lasting Beauty._ Inasmuch as Conjugal Affection was not—as might be naturally supposed—historically developed from Romantic Love, since it existed long before Romantic Love, the peculiarities of this later passion are not normally present in Conjugal Love. To what extent, however, they can be smuggled in, has just been shown; and it is one of the great social tasks of the future to make Conjugal and Romantic Love as much alike as possible: not by making the poetry of romance more prosaic, but by making the prose of conjugal life more poetic. But so long as Romantic Love is discouraged, Conjugal Affection, too, will of course be unable to borrow its unique charms. Hence an additional reason for facilitating the opportunities for Courtship and prolonging its duration. MARRIAGES OF REASON OR LOVE-MATCHES?