How very subtle this intuition is, we can only guess in part by the
apparent capriciousness and incomprehensibility of its occasional
action. We know that some men and women fall in love easily, while
others are only moved to love by some very special and singular
combination of peculiarities. We know that one man is readily stirred by
every pretty face he sees, while another man can only be roused by
intellectual qualities or by moral beauty. We know that sometimes we
meet people possessing every virtue and grace under heaven, and yet for
some unknown and incomprehensible reason we could no more fall in love
with them than we could fall in love with the Ten Commandments. I don't,
of course, for a moment accept the silly romantic notion that men and
women fall in love only once in their lives, or that each one of us has
somewhere on earth his or her exact affinity, whom we must sooner or
later meet or else die unsatisfied. Almost every healthy normal man or
woman has probably fallen in love over and over again in the course of a
lifetime (except in case of very early marriage), and could easily find
dozens of persons with whom they would be capable of falling in love
again if due occasion offered. We are not all created in pairs, like the
Exchequer tallies, exactly intended to fit into one another's minor
idiosyncrasies. Men and women as a rule very sensibly fall in love with
one another in the particular places and the particular societies they
happen to be cast among.
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