"Why a coxcomb?"
"Because you are flirting with that girl merely for your own amusement. You know perfectly well that she loves you, and you know equally well that you mean nothing. You are a flippant, shallow Arthur Pendennis—"
"Pas trop vite. If I meet a pleasant person in a pleasant place, and we like each other, I, for my part, will follow the whim of the hour. I will live while I live—provided, always, that I injure no other person in following that plan—and in every fairly supposable case of this kind the game is equal. Good morning."
Now you will say that I was afraid to continue the argument, and that I felt self-convicted of folly. Not at all; but I chanced to see Lulu returning, and I strolled down the piazza to meet her.
She was flushed, and tears were ill-concealed in her eyes. Her mother had apprised her that she was to leave in the morning. It was all over.
I did not dare to trust my tongue, but seized her hand a moment, and then ran for my life—literally for my life. Reaching my room I sat down in my chair again, and stared upon the floor. I loved Lulu more than any woman in the world. Yet I remembered precisely similar occasions before, when I felt as if the sun and life were departing when certain persons left my side, and I therefore could not trust my emotion, and run back again and swear absolute and eternal fidelity. You think I was a great fool, and destitute of feeling, and better not venture any more into general female society. Perhaps so. But it was written upon my consciousness suddenly and dazzlingly, as the mystic words upon Nebuchadnezzar's hall, that this, though sweet and absorbing, was but a summer fancy—offspring of sunshine, flowers, and music—not the permanent reality which all men seek in love. It was one of the characteristic charms of the summer life. It made the weeks a pleasant Masque of Truth—a paraphrase of the poetry of Love. I would not avoid it. I would not fail to sail among the isles of Greece, though but for a summer day—though Memory might forever yearningly revert to that delight—conscious of no dishonor, of no more selfishness than in enjoying a day or a flower—exposed to all the risks to which my partner in the delirious and delicious game was exposed.
We met at dinner. We strolled after dinner, and I felt the trembling of the arm within mine, as we spoke of travel, of Niagara, of Newport, and of parting. "Lulu," said I, "the pleasure of a Watering-Place is the meeting with a thousand friends whom we never saw before, and shall never see again."
That was the way I began.
"We meet here, Lulu, like travelers upon a mountain-top, one coming from the clear, green north, another from the sun-loved south; and we sit together for an hour talking, each of his own, and each story by its strangeness fascinating the other hearer. Then we rise, say farewell, and each pursues his journey alone, yet never forgetting that meeting on the mountain, and the sweet discourse that charmed the hours."
I found myself again delivering valedictory addresses, and to an audience more moved than the first.