She considered a moment,--then shook her head in a playful negative and smiled incredulously. She finished undressing, and throwing a warm boudoir wrap about her, a pretty garment of pale rose silk lined with white fur which had been a parting gift from her friend Sophy Lansing, and which, as she had declared, was “fit for a princess,” she went into her sitting-room, where there was a cheerful wood fire burning, and sat down to read. Among the several books arranged for her entertainment on a row of shelves within reach of the hand, was one old one bearing the title: “Of the Delusions whereby the Wisest are Deluded”--and the date 1584. Taking this down she opened it haphazard at a chapter headed: “Of the Delusion of Love.” It was written in old style English with many quaint forms of expression, more pointed and pithy than our modern “newspaper slang.” * * * * * “How many otherwise sober and sane persons are there,” soliloquised the ancient author--“who nevertheless do pitifully allow themselves to be led astray by this passion, which considered truly, is no more than the animal attraction of male for female, and female for male, no whit higher than that which prevails in the insect and brute world. For call it Love as they will, it is naught but Lust, as low an instinct or habit as that of craving for strong liquor or any wherewithall to still the insatiate demands of uncontrolled appetite. Love hath naught to do with Lust,--for Love is a Principle, not a Passion. For this cause it is comforting to read in Holy Scripture that in Heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, for there we are as the angels. And to be as the angels implyeth that we shall live in the Principle and not in the Passion. Could we conceive it possible on this earth for such an understanding to be arrived at between two persons of intelligence that they should love each other in this highest sense, then there would be no satiety in their tenderness for one another, and the delicacies of the soul would not be outraged by the coarseness of the body. It is indeed a deplorable and mournful contemplation, that we should be forced to descend from the inexpressible delights of an imagined ideal to the repulsive condition of the material stye, and that the fairest virgin, bred up softly, with no rougher composition of spirit than that of a rose or a lily, should be persuaded by this delusion of ‘love’ to yield her beauties to the deflowering touch which destroys all maidenly reserve, grace and modesty. For the familiarity of married relations doth, as is well known, put an end to all illusions of romance, and doth abase the finest nature to the gross animal level. And though it is assumed to be necessary that generations should be born without stint to fill an already over-filled world, meseemeth the necessity is not so great as it appeareth. Wars, plagues and famines are bred from