"Some day, when you've lived more," remarked Ruth, "you'll write love-poetry more simple, more direct."

"Though infinite ways He knows

To manifest His power,

God, when He made your face,

Was thinking of a flower!"

I read.

"There again you have an instance, of what I mean ... you are only rhetoricising about love; not partaking of its feelings."

"But I wrote all these poems about a real girl," and I told them the story of my distant passion for Vanna.

"No matter—you're a grown-up man who, as far as knowledge of women is concerned, has the heart of a baby," observed Hildreth.

—"in these days of sex-sophistication a fine thing!" cried Ruth.