There were nights when (accompanied by Guinivere) I watched the dull reflection of fiery-bowled Vesuvius, dreaming of the richly storied past, and feeling my heart stir with a thousand sweet wonderings of romance.
Can it be wondered, then, that some of this rapture and romance found an echo in my heart? Here was the time, the place, and—Guinivere. Only by a violent effort could I have saved myself, and violent efforts in Naples are unpopular. No; everything seemed to happen with relentless logic; and so one afternoon, looking down on the sweeping glory of the bay the following conversation took place:
She: Isn’t it ripping?
I: Yes, it’s too lovely for words. Why cannot we make our lives a harvest of such golden memories?
She: Yes, it would be awfully jolly, wouldn’t it?
I: If we cannot make the moment eternal, let us at least live eternal in the moment.
She: But how can we?
I wasn’t sure how we could, nor was I sure what I meant; but the freckled face was looking up at me so inquiringly, and the crisp-lipped mouth was pouted so invitingly that I sought the solution there. She, on her part, evidently found it so satisfactory that I laid considerable emphasis on it, and I was still further accentuating the emphasis when on looking up I found myself confronted by the stony, spectacled stare of poppa.
Anathema! Miseracordia! After that there was nothing to do but ask for his blessing. I could not plead poverty, for he is a director in most of the railways in which I hold shares. The god of fools, who had so often moved to save me, had this time left me on the lurch. So it came about that I spent three hundred dollars out of my five in the purchase of a diamond ring; and there matters stand.
Well, I shall have to go through with it. If there is one idea more than another I hold up to myself it is that of The Man who Makes Good. I have never been untrue to my promises; and now I have promised Guinivere a cottage at Newport and a flat in town. Life looms before me a grey vista of conventional monotony and Riverside Drive.