The influence of a woman's first love is felt on her whole after-existence: never can she dream such dream again. For a woman there is no second-love--youth, hope, belief, are all given to her first attachment; if unrequited, the heart becomes its own Prometheus, creative, ideal, but with the vulture preying upon it forever. --If deceived, the whole poetry of life is gone; the very essence of poetry is belief, and how can she, whose sweet eager credulity has once learnt the bitter truth--that its reliance was in vain, how can she ever believe again?

The Bride of Lindorf