She would not submit to be one of many, and
besides she loved and she eloped with her beloved. This
was interesting and romantic. She was at the time in a
very coarse travelling dress, but assured of protection
she took fresh apparel and ornament from her basket and
proceeded to array herself, and very pretty she looked
as she combed and plaited her long hair and completed
her toilette. In the meantime I had sent for the
'beloved,' who had kept in the background, and alas!
how the romance was dispelled when a _dual_ appeared!
_She had eloped with two men!_"
Every reader will laugh at this denouement, and that laugh is eloquent
proof that in saying there can be no real love without absolute
monopolism of one heart by another I simply formulated and emphasized
a truth which we all feel instinctively. Dalton's tale also brings out
very clearly the world-wide difference between a romantic love-story
and a story of romantic love.
Turning from the Old World to the New we find stories illustrating the
same amusing disregard of amorous monopolism. Rink, in his book of
Eskimo tales and traditions, cites a song which voices the reveries of
a Greenland bachelor:
"I am going to leave the country--in a large ship--for
that sweet little woman.
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