Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, girls play with love as if it were a doll; very soon after twenty they discover it is a dynamo. This is why an early and clandestine engagement often works more havoc than happiness.
For either, one of the parties to the concealed compact receives or pays attention which perturbs the other; or, a subsequent and acknowledged lover looks askance at the previous entanglement.
Since even if a clandestine engagement (as is usually the case) is merely a flirtation with the emoluments which accompany a promise to marry, those emoluments are not nice things for a subsequent and avowed lover, whether masculine or feminine, to think upon. Lastly, a laxity with regard to the claims of courtship is apt to breed a laxity with regard to the claims of wedlock. In short, flirtations, like clandestine engagements, are an affront to love. Accordingly to the engagement-ring should be as attached as much importance as to the wedding-ring.
The Art of Love
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