XII THE ONLY TOUCH OF LOVE Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 7. _To be_ is an irregular verb in all languages, but always regular is the verb _to love_. There are many sides to the existence of mortals; but to love is the same for high and low. Any mortal knows little enough about himself; but a mortal in love knows nothing. Love is a bewildering and a bedazzling fire, wherewith the eyes of youth are so blinded that they are able to see clearly neither within nor without. Often it happens, indeed, that the first intimation the heart has of the presence of the divine flame is the bewilderment which fills the mind. Berenice had long been contentedly and unenthusiastically convinced that, she was to marry Parker Stanford. She approved of him; he was wealthy, well-born, agreeable enough, and apparently very fond of her. She had not, it is true, become formally engaged to him. When he had asked her to become his wife she had teasingly asked for time for deliberation; but this was not because she felt any especial doubt about ultimately accepting him. She was pleased, maiden-like, to dally, and shrank from being formally bound. Her pulses had not yet stirred with the unrest which love awakens. Her vanity had been pleasantly aroused, and for the rest she was in all the ignorance of those whom passion has not yet made wise. She regarded marriage rather as an abstract thing; she was familiar with the idea that it was a matter of social arrangement and necessity, to be looked upon as a part of life. She had, it is true, some vaguely sentimental notion that love was a necessity, and being persuaded that the match before her was a desirable one, was persuaded also that she was in love with Stanford. At least she was sure that he was in love with her, and as she liked him, that answered. To find a man amusing, agreeable, handsome, and fulfilling the social requirements of a desirable husband seemed to her unsophisticated mind to love him. She was pleased with her lover; she was not insensible of the triumph of having won the attentions of one of the most sought-after men in her set; to pass her life in the well-ordered establishment which he would provide seemed to her a decorous and desirable method of fulfilling the destiny of a woman. She was willing that the event should be postponed indefinitely, it is true; and the man himself in her considerations of the future was something of a shadow; a shadow pleasant enough, yet so remote as to count for nothing intimately important. She was somewhat less sophisticated than most modern girls, inheriting that New England nature which is slow to understand emotion and endowed with the power rather of tenacity than of spontaneity of passion.