Of so potent an essence are their mere memories, it is said his knightly ghost haunts the rosy chambers of all maiden dreams, and men seeking Her like find all other women less desirable because of her fabled virtues. I suppose all girls see him more or less in their lovers. Imagination deceptively moulds their features to a similacrum of that noble legendary person, until the fierce light which beats upon the married reveals the unprepossessing traits of plain everyday humanity. Yet every woman begins her sentimental life with hopes unabated by the depressing failures of others. A most quaint and charming creature--this ideal who haunts the dreams of maidenhood! Compounded all of purity and passion, of chivalry and grace, of vigour and beauty. He can in moments of excitement tie the poker into love-knots, and has a hand of velvet with which to touch the dreamer's curls. A ruler of men, he is to be led by a single golden hair. Capable of volcanic passion, which renders him indifferent to meals or to fatigue, he can yet be moved to these ecstasies by but a single member of the sex, and despite snubs or coquetry can live for decades upon the mere hope of her favour. He excels in all manly prowess and diversions, and yet is never guilty of causing the loved one to mourn his absence during a golf widowhood. He adores poetry and is superior to all vulgar commercialism, and yet manages--in that simple fashion known only to ideals--to accumulate a fortune and be generous in the matter of diamonds. He combines in one stalwart person all the virtues of Galahad, Arthur, Launcelot, and Baron Rothschild. Later on the wife develops an ideal less magnificently ornamental than this choice collection of bric-à-brac virtues. The married idol must be thoroughly domesticated: prepared to throw himself with enthusiasm into the study of croup and measles; is deeply versed in the matter of female domestic service, and yet so full of tact as to be able to obliterate himself at moments of domestic crisis. Like the ideal servant, he must be never in the way and never out of it. He must be uncritical of failure, yet capable of enthusiasm for success; unselfish as a saint, yet commanding the secret of worldly achievement; and above all he must be hopelessly blind to the virtues and charms of every woman but his wife. Taste as to details may differ according to temperament, nationality, and social condition, but, broadly speaking, this delightful person with his eccentric combination of qualities figures in the abstract affections of all women. But these are dreams; diversions of those pleasant moments when the human moth allows itself, with futile richness of imagination, to consider the star as a possible companion, and it seems useless to hope that such a person will ever appear in this sinful and unworthy world.