"Oh, very jolly for very young lovers; they are usually such fools!"
"And yet, I believe I'd like to be a fool for love's sake, Miss. Juno."
"Oh, Paul, you are one for your own,—at least I'll think so, if you work yourself into this silly vein!"
Paul was silent and thoughtful. After a pause she continued.
"The trouble with you is, you fancy yourself in love with every new girl you meet—at least with the latest one, if she is at all out of the ordinary line."
"The trouble with me is that I don't keep on loving the same girl long enough to come to the happy climax—if the climax is to be a happy one; of course it doesn't follow that it is to be anything of the sort. I've been brought up in the bosom of too many families to believe in the lasting quality of love. Yet they are happy, you say, those two gentle people perpetuating spring on canvas and cambric. See, there is a small cloud of butterflies hovering about them—one of them is panting in fairy-like ecstasy on the poppy that decorates your Mama's hat!"
Paul rolled a cigarette and offered it to Miss. Juno, in a mild spirit of bravado. To his delight she accepted it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a girl to do. He rolled another and they sat down together in the arbor full of contentment.
"Have you never been in love?" asked Paul suddenly.
"Yes, I suppose so. I was engaged once; you know girls instinctively engage themselves to some one whom they fancy; they imagine themselves in love, and it is a pleasant fallacy. My engagement might have gone on forever, if he had contented himself with a mere engagement. He was a young army officer stationed miles and miles away. We wrote volumes of letters to each other—and they were clever letters; it was rather like a seaside novelette, our love affair. He was lonely, or restless, or something, and pressed his case. Then Mama and Gene—those ideal lovers—put their feet down and would none of it."
"And you?"