But I, who gave the fiat on which life or death hung poised as unhesitatingly as I controlled the fluctuations of an influenza; and I, to whom the pliability of the feminine will had long since become an accepted and somewhat elemental fact, like the nature of milk-toast; I, Dr. Thorne, who had the habit of success, who expected to make his point, who was accustomed to receive obedience, who fought death or hysteria, an opposing school or a tricky patient, with equal fidelity, as one who pursues the avocation of life,--I stood, conquered before this slender woman whose eyes, like the sword of flame, turned this way and that, guarding the barred gates of the only Eden I had ever chosen to enter. In short, for the first time in my life I found myself a suppliant; and I found myself thus and there for the sake of a feeling. It was not for science' sake, it was not for the sake of personal fame, or for the glory of an idea, or for the promulgation of a discovery. I had not been overcome upon the intellectual side of my nature. I had been conquered by an emotion. I had been beaten by a thing for which, all my life, I had been prescribing as confidently as I would for a sprain. Medical men will understand me, and some others may, when I say that I experienced surprise to come face to face at last, and in this unanswerable personal way, with an invisible, intangible power of the soul and of the body, which could not be treated as "a symptom." I loved her. That was enough, and beyond. I loved her. That was the beginning and end. I loved her. I found nothing in the Materia Medica that could cure the fact. I loved her. Science gave me no explanation of the phenomenon. I did not love her scientifically. I loved her terribly. I was a man of middle age, and had called myself a scientist and philosopher. I had thought, if ever, to love soberly and philosophically. Instead of that I loved as poets sing, as artists paint, as the statues look, as the great romances read, as ideals teach,--as the young love. As the young do? Nay. What young creature ever loved like that? They know not love who sip it at the spring. Youth is a fragile child that plays at love, Tosses a shell, and trims a little sail, Mimics the passion of the gathered years, And is a loiterer on the shallow bank Of the great flood that we have waited for. I do not think of any other thing which a man cannot do better at forty, than at twenty. Why, then, should he not the better love?