When love begins we may entertain some doubts as to the reality of the passion before our eyes. The heart beats more quickly than usual, and in the serene sky some clouds pass and evanesce in the deep azure; perhaps in the distant mist we behold, at times, a lightning flash; but will we have a storm or fine weather? If the heart is forced to answer, it may, in these cases, make the same solemn mistakes as the meteorologists in their almanacs or from the university chair. Embryos in their first stage are all similar, and even the most powerful microscope cannot distinguish today the egg of the lion from that of the rabbit. Incipient sympathies, growing friendships, affinities about to become loves, are all crepuscular things faintly delineated on the gray horizon, and the human eye may be easily deceived; but we cannot cast any blame upon it. And love, too, assumes so manifold and varied disguises as to render it difficult for us to make a good diagnosis in many cases. However, it is always easier to recognize love in our own home than in that of others, notwithstanding the fact that it is much more important for our happiness to know whether we are loved than to realize that we really are in love. To distinguish in others the true love from the mendacious, you may be helped by this physio-psychological essay, while in order to explore your own heart scant attention to the phase of your sentiments will suffice.
One truly loves when to the agonizing cry: "A man!--A woman!" a friendly distant voice replies: "Do not weep; I am here!" One loves when, after hearing that voice, the cry subsides and the deep void of desire is filled. One loves when the desire of the beloved is placed above everything else. One loves when one suddenly blushes or pales if he hears a name or the familiar swish of a garment that approaches. One loves when one involuntarily has on one's lips one name only a hundred times in a day, or when one ceases to pronounce a word which one was pronouncing a hundred times before. One loves when one's eyes are always fixed on one point of the star-map where the creature dwells who has become half of ourselves. One loves when one hurries to the mirror at every instant to ask of oneself, "Am I beautiful enough?" and when one restlessly explores the abyss of one's own conscience with the query, "Can I be loved?" One loves when in every fiber of the heart, in every atom of the organism, the sap of life is stirred and rushes through every vein and every nerve, so that an intimate, penetrating, deep commotion warns us with thrilling voice that something great and unusual is in us, as though God had visited us. This is the true love, that is not appeased by lust, nor quieted by ambition, nor cooled by distance, that does not even lose itself in the dreams of the night; the love that, to abandon us, must carry away with itself a large piece of bleeding flesh and tortured nerves.