“Splendid! Like a knight in a fairy tale!”
“Fairy tales sometimes come true,” he said, as he sprang up from his chivalric attitude. “I’ve made a vow, and I mean to keep it!”
She peeped at him under her golden eyelashes.
“Good Jack!” she said. “You ought to be very, very rich,—oh, immensely rich!”
“Why?”
“Because you would do so many kind things with your money,” she answered. “You couldn’t help doing them!”
“True!” he declared, with a grandiloquent air. “I would even pay for you to go to a Cinema! I would!”
Her delightful laughter was like that of a happy child. They went on, pacing slowly over the warm short grass, a pretty pair to look at, such as Herrick might have sung of, or Shakespeare, when he carolled of “the ring-time and the spring-time” and of “sweet lovers” who love the spring. Only they were not lovers. The pretty Sentimentalist loved Love in the abstract, and feared disillusion in its reality.
CHAPTER IV
“I SAW him,” said the Philosopher, sternly. “I saw him kneeling at your feet! I saw him with my own eyes!”