He has
no idea of being disloyal to his sweetheart, but he is a lost man
nevertheless--lost to the first girl and won by the second. Won in a
perfectly harmless and legitimate way too. Won while doing her duty,
keeping her promise, helping her friend. Her conscience acquits her.
She has only observed and made use of her cleverness to know that too
smooth and easy a course to true love generally gives him to the other
girl.
But in reality she has stolen him--she has committed a real theft.
And, personally, I should prefer to know her had she stolen money. You
can jail a man who steals your watch, but the girl who steals a man's
heart away from his sweetheart walks free, and uncondemned even--to
their shame be it spoken--by those who know what she has done.
Nobody dares condemn her--even the friends of the robbed girl, for
that presupposes some lack in her charm, and gives publicity to her
loss. The wronged girl, because of her pride and conventionality and
civilization, makes no outcry. A barbarian in her place would have
fallen on the robber girl in a fury and scratched her eyes out.
Sometimes I am sorry that our barbaric days are over.
Some of the greatest tragedies in life have come from this disloyalty
among girls in their relations with each other.
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