A TEST OF TRUE LOVE.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16800, 19 May 1926, Page 5

A TEST OF TRUE LOVE.

ONE WHO FAILED. A LESSON LEARNED. Moira was blissfully engaged—until a week or so ago. Now she is unattached once more, because she learned before it was too laic that the man of her unlessoned choice could not pass one of the primary feminine tcsLs of true love. Tlie first time she was a little "off colour" Moira naturally looked for sympathy from tlie affianced one. instead she gGt the knightly greeting: “ll’m 1 Been doing something silly, I suppose?" Poor Moira, thinking that it was tits idea of a joke, men being traditionally awkward and embarrassed in such circumstances, tried lo smile. But she could not shut out Hie picture of tlie impatient looks and gestures and her fiancee’s obvious resentment of anything in Hie nature of illness. Even the flowers he brought her were thrown on the table with a casual and almost cynical carelessness, as if Hie donor were intimating that lie knew (tiis was tlie usual tiling to do, but it was all very silly; and very weak on Moira’s part to give way. Tlie poor girl, in Hie first stage of a feverish cold, shed a few natural tears in secret after Hie departure of her betrothed, hut still tried to buoy up her drooping spirits with tlie reflection that strong men were gauche in Ihe presence of weak women’s sufferings.

■When she discovered, however, that every lime she was not at the top of tier physical form her future hushnnd-lo-he grew more and more off-handed and impatient, she could no longer close her eyes lo Ihe fact that she hart created ail imaginary being, endowed with all manner of non-existent qualities, out of a very ordinary amt more than ordinarily selfish young man, who tinted to have 1 1 is own little plan of life upset by one liair's-brendlU. Unattached, Moira is not particularly happy, but she lias the good sense to realise that occasional drab solitude is a stale infinitely preferable lo a union where sympathy—Hie particular kind of sympathy that is a woman’s greatest need—is wholly absent. A man may he entertaining, charming, and altogether "present,able” and delightful lo tool; at and talk with in a drawingroom, ballroom, or on a "joy-ride,” blit if all bis charm falls from him in a sick room he is no woman’s man. Better single blessedness than marriage with one who is not merely insensitive 10, hut actually resentful of, anything in the nature of wind he terms “feminine weakness."