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mmmmmmmmmmmm CONFESSIONS OF A .WIFE THE LOVE "ONCE" THEORY IS SHATTERED (Copyright, 1915, by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.) Mollie's love affair has smashed to smithereens the theory that in this world there is but one man for one woman. Yesterday afternoon Pat Sullivan dropped in ostensibly to ask if I thought that interviews added to Mollie's paragraph work would be too much for her health, but in reality to talk to me about his love for her. I told him that I thought the inter viewing would be fine for Mollie; that it would take her out of herself and give her something to do besides thinking of herself. This gave him the opening he wanted and he asked, quite ingenu ously: . "Mrs. Waverly, do you think Mollie was deeply in love with Chadwick?" "I don't think I know what "you mean, my dear Pat, by being deeply in love. Whenever any one 'gets in love' he thinks he, is 'deeply in love' at least so 'deeply' that he will never get out." "Having knowi and loved Chad," said honest Pat with a sigh, "I am afraid she will never be able to see anything in me." "Don't despair, my friend, all the great lovers of history and tradition have only told the modern lover but one thing and that is that love is transient. Boswell tells us that Dr. Johnson 'laughed at the idea that a man could love but once,' and George Eliot, who became Mrs. Cross a few months after the death of Lewes, asks: " 'How is it that poets have said so many fine things about our first love and so few about our later ones?' "You, yourself, my friend, are an illustration of this fact of being able to love more than once. You were in love with Chadwick Hatton's first se, as he was also; now both are willing to swear that the love of the woman whom one of you married and who estranged you from each other for years, was not the real love of either. You have each practically told me that Mollie is the one and only love of your existence." Pat was Irish enough to smile at my argument, but it was a rather rue ful smile. "I really don't care, Mrs. Waverly," he said, "if I am her first, second or third love, provided she accepts me as her lover. Do you think she will ever do this?" he asked, somewhat wistfully. "I would not be surprised if she did," I answered. "You are a very good-looking chap, with your -red hair and Irish eyes, you both have the same taste, and, my dear Pat, propinquity generally spells affinity. Keep close to Mollie. She doesn't "dis like you; in fact she likes you Very much." Almost involuntary Pat's hand shot out and clasped mine with a grip so hard that I almost felt the bones in my fingers crack. "I want her I want her so much that my heart aches with a physical hurt." "That is the Irish temperament, my boy. We always must have a heart aching of some kind." "I don't think that is a longing that is only given to Celts," said Kitty Maltram, who, much to my surprise, had come in without announcement in time to hear my last sentence. "The worst of it," she continued, shaking hands with Pat and kissing me, "is that we want and want for things we sicken and almost die with longing and then just when we don't want them any more they come to us." Then Kitty, feeling, perhaps, that she had been too tragic, asked lightly: "Have I interrupted any con fidences? It really looks serious when a married woman talks to a man oth- ercAttse fVflJ-V-iWi- -rtv . - .