Harrison went on: "Now let me give you a rule I believe in as I do in the sun's rising. Never marry a man just because you think you could manage to live with him. Don't do it unless you are dead sure you couldn't live without him!"
She took down her handkerchief, showing a white face, whose expression matched the quaver in her voice, as she said breathlessly: "But how if I meet a man and feel I cannot live without him, and he is already—" she brought it out squarely in the sunny peace,—"if he is already as good as married!"
He took it with the most single-hearted simplicity. "Now it's you who are unsophisticated and getting your ideas from fool novels. Things don't happen that way in real life. Either the man keeps his marriage a secret, in which case he is a sneak and not worth a second thought from any decent woman, or else, if she had known all along that he was married, she doesn't get to liking him that way. Don't you see?"
She looked away, down the stream for a moment with inscrutable eyes, and then broke into an unexpected laugh, rising at the same time and putting on her hat. "I see, yes, I see," she said. "It is as you say, quite simple. And now let us go to visit the rest of the park."
VI
The next excursion was to be their last, and Miss Midland had suggested a return to Versailles to see the park in its spring glory. They lunched in a little inclosure, rosy with the pink and white magnolia blossoms, where the uncut grass was already ankle-deep and the rose-bushes almost hid the gray stone wall with the feathery abundance of their first pale green leaves. From a remark of the girl's that perhaps this was the very spot where Marie Antoinette had once gathered about her gay court of pseudo-milkmaids, they fell into a discussion of that queen's pretty pastoral fancy. Harrison showed an unexpected sympathy with the futile, tragic little merrymaker.
"I expect she got sick and tired of being treated like a rich, great lady, and wanted to see what it would feel like to be a human being. The king is always disguising himself as a goat-herd to make sure he can be loved for his own sake."
"But those stories are all so monotonous!" she said impatiently. "The king always is made to find out that the shepherdess does love him for his own sake. What would happen if she wouldn't look at him?"
Harrison laughed, "Well, by George, I never thought of that. I should say if he cared enough about her to want his own way, he'd better get off his high-horse and say, 'Look-y-here, I'm not the common ordinary mutt I look. I'm the king in disguise. Now will you have me?"
Miss Midland looked at him hard. "Do you think it likely the girl would have him then?"