[I]n every human mind, possibly from an extremely early age, there exists a continually growing and continually more subtle complex of expectation and hope; an aggregation of lovely and exciting thoughts; conceptions of encounter and reaction picked up from observation, descriptions, drama; reveries of sensuous delights and ecstasies; reveries of understanding reciprocity; which I will call the Lover-Shadow. […] I think it is almost as essential in our lives as our self consciousness. It is other consciousness. […]

A vast proportion of human conduct is explicable only as a continual urge in the mind to realize, more or less completely, something if not at all of the Lover-Shadow, some aspect at least, some gleam of that complex of craving and hope.

H. G. Wells, H. G. Wells in Love