An exception must be made in favour of those hopeful lovers who merely wish to cure themselves in order to improve their chances of winning, as explained in the last chapter, under the head of Feigned Indifference. It is useless to quote to a rejected lover Rosalind’s philosophy: “Our poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person, _videlicet_, in a love cause.... Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” Useless to tell him, as Emerson does, that it is not a disgrace to love unrequitedly: “It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet.” To all such efforts at consolation the poor wretch may retort with Shakspere: “Every one may master a grief but he who has it.” Yet he may, at any rate, endeavour to “patch his grief” with the following reflections, based on the experience of centuries. ABSENCE Two thousand years ago Ovid advised the readers of his _Remedia Amoris_ who wished to cure themselves of an unwelcome attachment to flee the capital, to travel, hunt, or till the soil till all danger of a relapse should he averted. “Out of sight, out of mind,” wrote Thomas à Kempis; and this theme has been varied by a hundred writers in prose and verse. “Love is a local anguish,” exclaims Coleridge; “I am fifty miles away and am not half so miserable.” Carew puts it thus— “Then fly betimes, for only they Conquer love, that run away.” Even the unspeakable Turk has a proverb advising a lover to fly to the mountains. The Himalayas are probably meant, for no other chain would be high enough to allay the anguish of a polygamist rejected by a whole harem. On the other hand, “I find that absence still increases love,” wrote Charles Hopkins in the seventeenth century; and Bayly gave this paradox the familiar form of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”—to which a modern realistic wag has added the coda “of the other man.” “La Rochefoucauld has well remarked,” says Hume, “that absence destroys weak passions, but increases strong ones; as the wind extinguishes a candle but blows up a fire.” This simile is not very appropriate, nor is the statement unquestionable. It is more correct to say that short absence increases Love, while long absence cures it. There are two ways in which a short absence favours Love: Like the thirst of a man who would wean himself of strong liquor, the lovers ardour is at first increased when he is placed where he can no longer drink in the intoxicating sight of her beauty. Time is needed to annihilate the maddening memory of that pleasure.