“What will they say when you fall in love?” I asked idly.
“What have they said?” he parried.
“Everything,” I replied truthfully.
“Just so,” he answered; “you wouldn’t think they would have so much ingenuity. The queer thing,” he added meditatively, “is that such dull folk have the originality to get up such good gossip.”
“But I mean,” I said, “when you really fall in love.”
“I am in love,” he told me plaintively, “with seeing other people in love. I would go miles merely to look on two who are really devoted to each other. I look about for them everywhere. Do you know,” he said, “speaking of being in love myself, there is a most exquisite creature in a tableau I’m in Monday night. I am in love with her, but, by Jove, it being a tableau I can’t say a word to tell her so. It’s my confounded luck. Sometimes I think I’m in a tableau all the time and can’t say any of the things I really mean.”
“And who may she be?” I asked politely, being old to the meaningless enthusiasms of Hobart Eddy.
“By Jove! I didn’t find out,” he remembered. “Nobody knew when I asked ’em. I suppose they were in a tableau, too, and speechless. I forgot to ask Avis. She’s a goddess, asleep on a bank. She’s Diana—sandals and crown and all that. And I believe I’m to come swooning down a cloud with a gold club in my hand. Anyway—”
“Hobart Eddy,” I cried, “are you Endymion?”
“But why not?” he asked with a fine show of indignation; “do you think I should be just an ordinary shepherd, with no attention paid me?”