third
has its roots apparently in mere haphazard and causelessness, and isn't
explicable by any means whatsoever, and yet is far and away the
violentest of the three. It falls as the lightning from the clouds, and
strikes whom it will. Though I mix my metaphors fearlessly, like a man,
I trust, with your feminine intuition, you follow me?"

"No," said Annunziata, without compunction, her eyes on the distance. "I
don't know what you mean."

"Thank Heaven you don't, pray Heaven you never may," said her
inconsequential friend. "For love-love is a plague. You meet a person,
for example, in a garden. You know nothing whatever about her, not even
her name, though you fear it may be Schmidt. You meet her not more than
half a dozen times all told. And suddenly one morning you wake up to
discover that she has become to you the person of first importance in
the world. She is practically a total stranger to you, she's of a
different nationality, a different rank, yet she's infinitely the most
precious and important person in the world. When you're absent from her
you can do nothing but think of her, gloating with throes of aromatic
pain over the memory of your last meeting with her, longing with
soul-hunger for your next. The merest flutter of her gown, modulation of
her voice, glance of her eye, will throw your heart into a palpitation.
You look in the direction of the house that she inhabits, and you feel
the emotions of a Peri looking at the gate of Eden. And it gives you the
strangest sort of strange joy to talk about her, though of course you
take pains to talk about her in veiled terms, obliquely, so that your
listener shan't guess _whom_ you are talking about. In short, she is the
be-all and the end-all of your existence,--and you don't even know her
name, though you fear it may be Schmidt."

He lolled back at ease on the marble bench, and twirled his yellow-red
moustaches, fancy free.

"But you do know her name," said Annunziata, simply, in her deepest
voice, holding him with a gaze, lucent and serious, that seemed almost
reproachful. "Her name is Maria Dolores."

The thing was tolerably unexpected. What wonder if it put my hero out of
countenance? His attitude grew rigid, his pink skin three shades pinker;
his blue eyes stared at her, startled. So for a second; then he relaxed,
and laughed, laughed long and heartily, perhaps a little despitefully
too, at his own expense. ... But he must try, if he might, to repair the