The Washington herald., 1917-12-03

! get a great many pathetic letters
from women who write that the men
they love have ceased to love them
and pitifully ask how they can re-
gain this lost affection.
Sometimes the letter is from q wife
who says that her husband has grown
tired Of her, that he does not take
the trouble even to pretend to care
for her or take any interest in her
any more. She might be the kitchen
stove for all the tenderness he ever
shows her. He never observes how
she looks. He never comments on
what she does except to criticize 1t.
He Is silent as the grave or else as
grouchy as a sore-headed bear around
the house.
Sometimes the man comes out bold
ly and honestly and tells his wife that
he no longer loves her and asks her
to give him a divorce. Oftener he
lacks the courage to put the CHASTITY
truth in words, but In his sullen looks.
his impatience Of manner. his joyless
attitude toward life, his poor wife
reads her doom. She knows that her
husbands love for her Is dead. that
he never looks at her without regret
ting the folly that made him marry
her and that only a sense Of honor
and duty and compassion makes him
endure her with outward patience.
Sometimes the woman who writes is
woman who has lost the love of a
man on whom she had not even the
legal claim of matrimony. Sometimes
for years the man and woman had
been sweethearts, and he had monopo-
lized her time and attention, driving
all other suitors away. Very often II
had been a beautiful relationship, full
Of sentiment and romance, generosity
and sympathy-the real mating Of two
hearts and souls.
And then something happened. some
thing so vague and intangible that
the woman river knew why, nor
when, nor how the tragedy occurred.
! but gradually the fire died out of the
mars love making and II grew colder
and colder until It was Just a handful
Of ashes on the altar OF what had been
a great passion. The man quit coming
to see her so often, then stayed away
for weeks, and finally only came when
she bullied him into 1t by frantic notes
and telephones, and at last the day
came when the woman faced the bit
ter fact that the man she loved was
weary Of her, that she bored him and
that she was a burden on his hands.
And these poor, forsaken, neglected
women, mourning over their dead
loves, ask what they can do to breathe
into 1t once more the breath of life.
Alas, there Is absolutely nothing
that they can do. No one can give
them a reliable recipe for warming
up luke warm affection or relocating
q cold fancy. The days Of miracles
are past and no one has the power tc
bid a dead love to arise and walk
again.
Love is like a disease. When we
have recovered from it. it Is over, fol
good and all. When the individual
who has once thrilled MS ceases tC
thrill US, nothing that he or she car
do will quicken the pulse by single
! heart beat. Nor can any will or de-
sire Of Ours bring back the dear, de.
| Iightful pang that crisped our nerves
and sent our temperature up to fever
heat.
Charm. interest, attraction, the mys
terious something that draws US t.
another we neither understand moi
can explain. We only know that we
feel them for a time and then we fee
them no more. The one that we have
thought beautiful becomes hideous II
our eyes. The one who interested u,