A Positive Romance 1898

My friend Hammond is a bachelor, and lives in chambers in New York.
Whenever we meet on my occasional visits to the city, he insists on my
spending the night with him. On one of these occasions we had been
at the opera during the evening, and had witnessed an ovation to a
beautiful and famous singer. We had been stirred by the enthusiasm of
the audience, and on our walk home fell to discussing a theme suggested
by the scene; namely, the tendency of man to assume a worshipful
attitude towards woman, and the reason for it. Was it merely a phase of
the passional relation between the sexes, or had it some deeper and more
mysterious significance?