"
"Then," answered the Minor Poet, "you surely agree with me that
woman is justified in demanding this 'make-weight.' The woman gives
her love, if you will. It is the art treasure, the gilded vase
thrown in with the pound of tea; but the tea has to be paid for."
"It all sounds very clever," commented the Old Maid; "yet I fail to
see what good comes of ridiculing a thing one's heart tells one is
sacred."
"Do not be so sure I am wishful to ridicule," answered the Minor
Poet. "Love is a wondrous statue God carved with His own hands and
placed in the Garden of Life, long ago. And man, knowing not sin,
worshipped her, seeing her beautiful. Till the time came when man
learnt evil; then saw that the statue was naked, and was ashamed of
it. Since when he has been busy, draping it, now in the fashion of
this age, now in the fashion of that. We have shod her in dainty
bottines, regretting the size of her feet. We employ the best
artistes to design for her cunning robes that shall disguise her
shape. Each season we fix fresh millinery upon her changeless head.
We hang around her robes of woven words.
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