Indeed, there are English girls of certain classes who conduct their own alliance almost as coolly and circumspectly as the wariest French mother. For them it is a matter of stages, first walking out, then keeping company, and then the engagement with its solemn ring. But the ring by no means clinches matters: the wait for adequate circumstances to make the marriage advisable may last one year or more. If during that wait the probationer fails to answer expectations, or even himself cools off, the affair is adjusted without undue recrimination. Rings and other presents are returned and, in all probability, another probationer is quickly found to begin the round anew. The methods of the “upper” classes are hasty and ill-considered in comparison, though the grave love making of Sir Walter Scott’s and Jane Austen’s young people will show that this was not always so. Yet, on the whole, in spite of the quite obvious sentimentality of our imaginations on this subject—what other nation has such a vast yearly output of incredibly washy love stories?—we are not unduly sentimental in our actions. Love for us makes the world go round, not merely the head, and it is usually built on a firm foundation of compatability. The young Englishwoman does not enter upon the matrimonial voyage all of a tremble, which is another excellent thing. She has a fairly shrewd idea of what she wants and of what she is going to get. She is quite aware that marriage entails duties as well as pleasures, but, as she has already had a good deal of the fun, she is soberly ready to welcome the new responsibility which will to some extent diminish it. Men of other nations may think there is something charming in the prospect of leading a timid (but rather hungry) child into a new and fascinating garden full of the delights of the senses and the emotions, but that is not the Englishman’s desire. For him, too, love is not all emotion: his passion is tinged unconsciously with prudence. His nature leads him to look for a companion as well as a divinity, and since he is a simple soul, to whom the refinements of sentiment are tiresome in the long run, he prefers a comrade ready-made to a novice whose transformation into a comrade will take some time and considerable trouble. The English girl is always a comrade, from the nursery onwards. The spirit of comradeship is so deeply ingrained in the family sense of English people that they could not avoid it if they would. It is on that side that you can always best take an English girl, for, though she has vanity too, she is not one of those precious creatures who are sensitive in their vanities and nowhere else; who will take a rebuff calmly if it is delivered with a courtly word, but will bitterly resent a gratification if it is proffered too roughly for their pride. Judged by universal standards Englishmen are splendid husbands but inadequate lovers: Englishwomen are perfect wives but unsatisfactory mistresses. CHAPTER IV