Man possessed the Divine gift of free will to use or abuse as he would, so far as his own life-conduct was concerned; but there was no evasion of the adamantine law of the survival and progress of the fittest, which, in the course of ages, infallibly proved to be the best.

This, in a word, was why "some are born to honour and some to dishonour." Yet she had still to fathom an even subtler mystery than this: the mystery of sexual love.

Why should one man and one woman, out of all the teeming millions of humanity, be irresistibly attracted to each other by a force which none can analyse or define?
Why should a woman, confronted with the choice between two men, one of whom possesses every apparent advantage over the other, yet feel her heart go out to that other, and impel her to follow him, even to the leaving of father and mother and home, and all else that has been dear to her?
Why in the soul of every true man and woman is Love, when it comes, made Lord of all, and all in all?
It is because Love is co-eternal with Life, and these two have loved, perchance wedded, many times before in other lives which they have lived together, and, with the succession of these lives, their love has grown stronger and purer, until "falling in love" is merely a recognition of lovers; unconscious, no doubt, to those who have not progressed far enough in wisdom, but none the less necessary and inevitable for that.[1] Is it not from ignorance of this truth, or wilful denial of this law, that all the miseries of mismarriage come forth?
Again the woman has the choice.

She obeys the bidding of her own lust of wealth and comfort and social power, or she submits to the pressure of family influence, or the stress of poverty, and crushes--or thinks she does--the ages-old love out of her heart and marries the man she does not love, never has loved, and never can.

She has defied the eternal Law of Selection.