Words anyhow, in matters of love, are rather foolish; they are worse than foolish, they are useless; and again they are worse than useless, for they are misleading. Love is an art. “It must be revealed by _acts_,” says a Swiss writer, “and not _betrayed_ by words.” And Havelock Ellis, speaking further of the mistake of relying on declarations and asservations, says:[26] “This is scarcely realized by those ill-advised lovers who consider that the first step in courtship—and perhaps even the whole of courtship—is for a man to ask a woman to be his wife. That is so far from being the case that it constantly happens that the premature exhibition of so large a demand at once and forever damns all the wooer’s chances.” And in another passage he says:[27] “Love’s requests cannot be made in words, nor truthfully answered in words: a fine divination is still needed as long as love lasts.” Love is an art. As no mere talk can convey the meaning of a piece of music or a beautiful poem, so no verbal declaration can come anywhere near expressing what the lover wants to say. And for one very good and sufficient reason (among others)—namely, that he does not know himself! Under these circumstances to say anything is almost certainly to say something misleading or false. And the decent lover knows this and holds his tongue. To talk about your devotion is to kill it—moreover, it is to render it banal and suspect in the eyes of your beloved. Nevertheless though he cannot describe or explain what he wants to say, the lover can _feel_ it—is feeling it all the time; and this feeling, like other feelings, he can express by indirections—by symbols, by actions, by the alphabet of deed and gesture, and all the hieroglyphics of Life and Art. Like the animals and the angels and all the blessed creatures who don’t _talk_, he can communicate in the ancient, primeval, universal language of all creation, in the language which is itself creation. CHAPTER IV ITS ULTIMATE MEANINGS “To talk about your devotion is to kill it.” Perhaps one ought even to say that to talk at all is to kill it! One often thinks what divine and beautiful creatures—men and women—there are all around, how loving and lovable, how gracious in their charm, how grand in their destiny!—if indeed they could only be persuaded to remain within that magic circle of silence. And then alas! one of these divinities begins to talk—and it is like the fair woman in the fable, out of whose mouth, whenever she opened it, there jumped a _mouse_! The shock is almost more than one can bear. Not that the shock proceeds from the ignorance displayed—for the animals and even the angels are deliciously ignorant—but from the revelations which speech unconsciously makes of certain states of the soul—from the strange _falsity_ which is too often heard in the words, and in the very tones of the voice.