THE ecstacy of feeling the presence of the ideal may continue for many meetings and partings, until the lovers believe that each is responsible for the beautiful ideal that is theirs.

They arrange to live permanently in each other’s presence.

But this living together has induced a thousand conditions that had nothing whatever to do with the ecstacy of the soul.

Young people do not realize how much economics has to do with every-day living until they are face to face with every-day life.

Earning money, the drudgery in housework, the personal habits of the individuals, intimate tastes and prejudices, are all foreign to the awakening of ideals in the soul. The beloved, who was once an angel, becomes a wife, a weaver, a worker, a plain human being, subject to the shortcomings and ignorance that other human beings have.

And the lover, who is also beloved, becomes a husband, an earner of money, in competition with other workers, subject to irritation, weariness, discouragements, human failings.

The human qualities, the frailties and shortcomings, do not inspire the soul to high ideals. And each looks across the impassable gulf of the breakfast-table and wonders why they “introduced into their lives a spy.”

“Where is the ideal I was to dwell with?”

“Where is the ideal that was to abide with me?”

Their souls are wrenched in anguish.