“Not the real, romantic, burning, suicidal love your sonnets used to breathe.”

“Then you do not know what love is.”

“Do you?”

“You should know whether I do or not.”

“Should I?  Then I conclude that you do not.  You are growing stout.  Your dress is not in the least neglected.  I am certain you enjoy life thoroughly.  No, you have never known love in all its novelistic-poetic outrageousness.  That respectable old passion is a myth.”

“You look for signs that only children shew.  When an oak dies, it does not wither and fall at once as a sapling does.  Perhaps you will one day know what it is to love.”

“Perhaps so.”

“In any case, you will be able to boast of having inspired the passion.”

“I hope so—­at least, I mean that it is all nonsense.  Do look at that vegetable lobster of a thing, that cactus.”

“In order to set off its ugliness properly, you should see yourself against the background of palms, with that great fan-like leaf for a halo, and——­”

“Thank you.  I see it all in my mind’s eye by your eloquent description.  You are quite right in supposing that I like compliments; but I am particular about their quality; and I dont need to be told I am pretty in comparison with a hideous cactus.  You would not have condescended to make such a speech long ago.  You are changed.”

“Not toward you, on my honor.”

“I did not mean that:  I meant toward yourself.”

“I am glad you have taken even that slender note of me.  I find you somewhat changed, too.”

“I did not know that I shewed it; but it is true.  I feel as if Marian Lind was a person whom I knew once, but whom I should hardly know again.”

“The change in me has not produced that effect.  I feel as though Marian Lind were the history of my life.”

“You have become quite a master of the art of saying pretty things.  You are nearly as glib at it as Ned.”

“We have the same incentive to admiration.”

“The same!  You do not suppose that Ned pays me compliments.  He never did such a thing in his life.  No:  I first discovered his talent in that direction at Palermo, where I surprised him in an animated discourse with the dark-eyed daughter of an innkeeper there.  That was the first conversation in Italian I succeeded in following.  A week later I could understand the language almost as well as he.  However, dont let us waste the whole afternoon talking stuff.  I want to ask you about your mother.  I should greatly like to call upon her; but she has never made me any sign since my marriage; and Mrs. Leith Fairfax tells me that she never allows my name to be mentioned to her.  I thought she was fond of me.”

“So she was.  But she has never forgiven you for making me suffer as you did.  You see she has more spirit than I. She would be angered if she saw me now tamely following the triumphal chariot of my fair tyrant.”