Elinor says
How very absurd and medieval on his part to send me a valentine!
A real valentine with, I have no doubt, birds and hearts and cupids and true lover’s knots–and–arrows on it. I do not think I shall be entirely satisfied unless it has a heart penetrated an arrow.
There is something about a heart, in vivid color, penetrated an arrow, that expresses an amount of sentimental suffering otherwise impossible to delineate.
I used to be very fond of the openwork ones over colored paper, but I think now I should be able to do without the colored paper. My tastes have softened down with the faded aestheticism of the age. But I should like some of those appropriate legends “stuck” here and there; something simple but convincing, such as “True Love,” or “Mine is Thine,” “Think of Me,” or “From a True Friend.”
I remember that even to the uncritical eye of youth these aphorisms had rather the air of being attached as a work of supererogation after the real valentine was finished.
They suggest conventionalized emotion in a way that is charming, and Dick and I both like our emotion conventionalized.