'How very characteristic of our time and of our world,' said the queen, as she drew her ivory-hued, violet-laden skirts over the smooth turf. 'We have talked for three whole hours of Love, and nobody has ever thought of mentioning Marriage as his kinsman!'
'He who has had the honour to marry you might well have done so, had he been here to-day,' murmured a courtier on her right.
She laughed, looking up into the deep-blue evening sky through the network of green leaves:
'But he was not here, so he was saved the difficulty of choice between an insincerity and a rudeness, always a very serious dilemma to him. Marriage is the grave of love, my dear friend, even if he be buried with roses for his pillow and lilies for his shroud.'
'But Love may be stronger than Death. Solomon has said so.'
'What is stronger than Death? Death is stronger than all of us. Tout cela pourrira. It is the despair of the lover and the poet, and the consolation of the beggar when the rich and the beautiful go past him.'
She spoke with a certain melancholy, and absently struck the tall heads of seeding grasses with her ivory sceptre.
'We have only wearied you, I fear,' said her companion, with contrition and mortification.
'That is the fault of Love,' she answered, with a smile.