We spent an hour in discussing the good things below, and then went back arm-in-arm to the cosy apartments we had vacated above. The fire had been renewed and our seats still in the same suggestive places attracted us towards them again. Alice threw herself upon her lounge and hummed a snatch of her last night's selection, which she suddenly interrupted with a fully-indulged yawn out of which again emerged a taunting
"Come now Amelia, a quoi penses-tu?"
"I was thinking of you," I answered, "you are such a queer girl."
"You will be still further convinced of that opinion when you know a little more about me," she said in a jocosely earnest tone. "You know I intend to go to Europe in a fortnight, ostensibly to see the time-honored sights, to gloat over venerable art, and improve my mind generally with such a broad view of experience, but Oh! what a blind that is!" she exclaimed in mock indignation. "Of course everybody knows that I am being sent out to seek my fortune, matrimonially speaking. I am too rich, and too beautiful, and too accomplished to be thrown away upon a self-made Canadian. I must go in search of patrician smiles across the sea, and win them for a plausible cause."
She curled her lips into an expression of supreme disgust, as she finished, and began to toy with the end of one golden braid.
"You don't mean half of what you say, Alice," I interposed quietly. "Since you are not satisfied with all the good things the gods have provided so far, I know only one other that can infuse a soul into your vapid and savor less comforts. It is possible for your present gloom to be dispelled by the warmth and brightness of a sunshine that cheers the loneliest lives, and I think you can never be happy without it."
"What is it?" she asked curtly.
"Love," I answered, "honest, stable, earnest love."
"Faugh!" she exclaimed, flinging her delicate braid away from her caressing fingers, "is that all?"
"That is all, a mere trifle if you will, but it is the axis around which men's temporal happiness revolves."