Was
there one? What sort of girl would he admire, she wondered. She had
noticed that in their talks he had never mentioned any of her sex or
given her a clue to his likes and dislikes. She knew little of men. Her
brother was the only one of whose inner life and ideas she had any
knowledge, and he was no help to her understanding of Dermot.
It never occurred to Noreen that there was anything unusual in her interest
in this new friend, nor did she suspect that that interest was perilously
akin to a deeper feeling. All she knew was that she liked him and was
content to be near him. She had not reached the stage of being miserable
out of his presence. The dawn of a woman's love is the happiest time in its
story. There is no certain realisation of the truth to startle, perhaps
affright, her, no doubts to depress her, no jealous fears to torture her
heart--only a vague, delicious feeling of gladness, a pleasant rose-tinted
glow to brighten life and warm her heart. The fierce, devouring flames come
later.
The first love of a young girl is passionless, pure; a fanciful, poetic
devotion to an ideal; the worship of a deified, glorious being who does
not, never could, exist. Too often the realisation of the truth that the
idol has feet of clay is enough to burst the iridescent glowing bubble. Too
seldom the love deepens, develops into the true and lasting devotion of the
woman, clear-sighted enough to see the real man through the mists of
illusion, but fondly wise enough to cherish him in spite of his faults,
aye, even because of them, as a mother loves her deformed child for its
very infirmity.
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