Olive by Dinah Mulock — Read

I know that I am promulgating a new theory of love; I know that in Olive Rothesay I dare to paint a woman full of all maidenly virtues, who has yet given her heart away unrequited -- given it to a man who knows not of the treasure he has never sought to win. The case, I grant, is rare. I believe that a woman seldom bestows her love save in return for other love -- be it silent or spoken -- real or imaginary. If it is not so, either she has deceived herself, or has been deceived.

But the thing is quite possible -- ay, and happens sometimes -- that a woman unselfish, unexacting in all her affections, more prone to give than to receive, thinking perhaps very little of love or marriage, may be unconsciously attracted by some imagined perfection in the other sex, and be thus led on through the worship of abstract goodness until she wakes to find that she has learned to love _the man_. For what is love in its purest and divinest sense, but that innate yearning after perfection which we vainly hope to find in some other human soul; this is as likely to be felt by a woman as by a man -- ay, and by one most pure from every thought of unfeminine boldness, vanity, or sin.