"No use telling you. Wouldn't believe me. Be like telling a man who's fond of his wine that he'd be just as well off with water."
She said, musingly, "Yes; love is the wine of life, isn't it?"
"Wine that maketh glad the heart of man—and can also play the deuce with it."
She sat for some time smiling to herself with faint amusement. "Do you really disapprove of love, Uncle Sim?" she asked, at last.
He yawned loudly and stretched himself. "What 'd be the good of that? Don't disapprove of it any more than I disapprove of the circulation of the blood. Force in life—of course! Treasure to be valued and peril to be controlled. To play with it requires skill; to utilize it calls for wisdom."
She had again been smiling gently to herself when she said, "I doubt if you can ever have been in love."
"Got nothing to do with it. Not obliged to have been insane to understand insanity. As a matter of fact, best brain specialists have always kept their senses."
"Oh, then, you rate love with insanity."
"Depends on the kind. Some sorts not far from it. Obsession. Brain-storm. Supernormal excitement. Passing commotion of the senses. Comes as suddenly as a summer tempest—thunder and lightning and rain—and goes the same way."
"Oh, but would you call that love?"