It was her turn to color. But, elbowing instinctive resentment, came uneasiness. His love seemed to her of the sort that flowers in the romances--the love that endures all, asks nothing, lives forever upon its own unfed fire. As is so often the case with women whose charms move men to extravagance of speech and emotion, it was a great satisfaction to her, to her vanity, to feel that she had inspired this wonderful immortal flame; obviously, to feed such a flame by giving love for love would reduce it to the commonplace. All women start with these exaggerated notions of the value of being loved; few of them ever realize and rouse themselves, or are aroused, from their vanity to the truth that the value is all the other way. Adelaide was only the natural woman in blindly fancying that Dory was the one to be commiserated, in not seeing that she herself was a greater loser than he, that to return his love would not be a concession but an acquisition. Most men are content to love, to compel women to receive their love; they prefer the passive, the receptive attitude in the woman, and are even bored by being actively loved in return; for love is exacting, and the male is impatient of exaction. Adelaide did not understand just this broad but subtle difference between Dory and "most men"--that he would feel that he was violating her were he to sweep her away in the arms of his impetuous released passion, as he knew he could. He felt that such a yielding was, after all, like the inert obedience of the leaf to the storm wind--that what he could compel, what women call love, would be as utterly without substance as an image in a mirror, indeed, would be a mere passive reflection of his own love--all most men want, but worthless to him.