Quaint Courtships
Introduction To the perverse all courtships probably are quaint; but if ever human nature may be allowed the full range of originality, it may very well be in the exciting and very personal moments of making love. Our own peculiar social structure, in which the sexes have so much innocent freedom, and youth is left almost entirely to its own devices in the arrangement of double happiness, is so favorable to the expression of character at these supreme moments, that it is wonderful there is so little which is idiosyncratic in our wooings. They tend rather to a type, very simple, very normal, and most people get married for the reason that they are in love, as if it were the most matter-of-course affair of life. They find the fact of being in love so entirely satisfying to the ideal, that they seek nothing adventitious from circumstance to heighten their tremendous consciousness. Yet, here and there people, even American people, are so placed that they take from the situation a color of eccentricity, if they impart none to it, and the old, old story, which we all wish to have end well, zigzags to a fortunate close past juts and angles of individuality which
ASTA. Well, I will not leave you.
ALLMERS. [Seizing her hand and holding it fast.] Thank you for
that! [Looks out for a time over the fiord.] Where is my little
Eyolf now? [Smiling .sadly to her.] Can you tell me that my big,
wise Eyolf? [Shaking his head.] No one in all the world can tell me
that. I know only this one terrible thing--that he is gone from me.
ASTA. [Looking up to the left, and withdrawing her hand.] Here they
are coming.
[MRS. ALLMERS and Engineer BORGHEIM come down by the wood-path, she
leading the way. She wears a dark dress and a black veil over her
head. He has an umbrella under his arm.]
ALLMERS. [Going to meet her.] How is it with you, Rita?
RITA. [Passing him.] Oh, don't ask.
ALLMERS. Why do you come here?
RITA. Only to look for you. What are you doing?
ALLMERS. Nothing. Asta came down to me.
Introduction To the perverse all courtships probably are quaint; but if ever human nature may be allowed the full range of originality, it may very well be in the exciting and very personal moments of making love. Our own peculiar social structure, in which the sexes have so much innocent freedom, and youth is left almost entirely to its own devices in the arrangement of double happiness, is so favorable to the expression of character at these supreme moments, that it is wonderful there is so little which is idiosyncratic in our wooings. They tend rather to a type, very simple, very normal, and most people get married for the reason that they are in love, as if it were the most matter-of-course affair of life. They find the fact of being in love so entirely satisfying to the ideal, that they seek nothing adventitious from circumstance to heighten their tremendous consciousness. Yet, here and there people, even American people, are so placed that they take from the situation a color of eccentricity, if they impart none to it, and the old, old story, which we all wish to have end well, zigzags to a fortunate close past juts and angles of individuality which