“Do you know, Lala Roy,” Arnold said one morning after a silence of three hours or so, “do you know that this is going to be the portrait of the most beautiful woman in the world, and the best?”

“It is well,” said the Philosopher, “when a young man desires virtue as well as beauty.”

“You have known her all her life.  Don’t trouble yourself to speak, Lala.  You can nod your head if there isn’t a maxim ready.  You began to lodge in the house twenty years ago, and you have seen her every day since.  If she is not the best, as well as the most beautiful girl in the world, you ought to know and can contradict me.  But you do know it.”

“Happy is the man,” said the Sage, “who shall call her wife; happy the children who shall call her mother.”

“I suppose, Lala,” Arnold went on with an ingenuous blush, “I suppose that you have perceived that—­that—­in fact—­I love her.”

The Philosopher inclined his head.

“Do you think—­you who know her so well—­that she suspects or knows it?”

“The thoughts of a maiden are secret thoughts.  As well may one search for the beginnings of a river as inquire into the mind of a woman.  Their ways are not our ways, nor are their thoughts ours, nor have we wit to understand, nor have they tongue to utter the things they think.  I know not whether she suspects.”

“Yet you have had experience, Lala Roy?”

A smile stole over the Sage’s features.

“In the old days when I was young, I had experience, as all men have.  I have had many wives.  Yet to me, as to all others, the thoughts of the harem are unknown.”

“Yet, Iris—­surely you know the thoughts of Iris, your pupil.”

“I know only that her heart is the abode of goodness, and that she knows not any evil thought.  Young man, beware.  Trouble not the clear fountain.”

“Heaven knows,” said Arnold, “I would not—­” And here he stopped.

“Youth,” said the Sage presently, “is the season for love.  Enjoy the present happiness.  Woman is made to be loved.  Receive with gratitude what Heaven gives.  The present moment is your own.  Defer not until the evening what you may accomplish at noon.”

With these words the oracle became silent, and Arnold sat down and began to think it all over again.

An hour later he presented himself at the house in the King’s Road.  Iris was alone, and she was playing.

“You, Arnold?  It is early for you.”

“Forgive me, Iris, for breaking in on your afternoon; but I thought—­it is a fine afternoon—­I thought that, perhaps—­You have never taken a walk with me.”

She blushed, I think in sympathy with Arnold, who looked confused and stammered, and then she said she would go with him.