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If you are a fan of Jane Austen's tepid novels, then Cary's advice will no doubt work for you, and you will appreciate the so-called "balm of friendship". But if your clandestine love is as passionate and inwardly consuming as you maintain, then it's best to come out with it, rather than playing hypothetical games which tend to belittle all you feel. Certainly, you'll be in torment if she rejects you outright. But that torment won't last.- It's part of the psyche's self-defence mechanism that such things don't.- Once you're in love, a friendship will only make your torture more and more unbearable. In the words of Cavalier poet Thomas Carew:
Give me love or more disdain.
The frigid or the torrid zone
Brings equal ease unto my pain
The temperate affords me none.
