r to hide it never, I think, occurred to her. What
more natural then than that others should think of me as she did?

"Of course," I said dryly. "But in the end my sweetheart, plighted to me
for all eternity, had to choose betwixt her lover and something she had
which he much desired. She sighed, deliberated long--full five seconds I
vow--and in end played traitor to love. She was desolated to lose me, but
the alternative was not to be endured. She sacrificed me for a raspberry
tart. So was shattered young love's first dream. 'Tis my only consolation
that I snatched the tart and eat it as I ran. Thus Phyllis lost both her
lover and her portion. Ah, those brave golden days! The world, an
unexplored wonder, lay at my feet. She was seven, I was nine."

"Oh." There was an odd little note of relief in the velvet voice that
seemed to reproach me for a brute. I was forever forgetting that the ways
of 'Toinette Westerleigh were not the ways of Aileen Macleod.

The dying sun flooded the topmost branches of the forest foliage. My eyes
came round to the aureole which was their usual magnet.

"When the sun catches it 'tis shot with glints of gold."

"It is indeed very beautiful."

"In cloudy weather 'tis a burnished bronze."

She looked at me in surprise.

"Bronze! Surely you are meaning green?"

"Not I, bronze. Again you might swear it russet."

"That will be in the autumn when they are turning colour just before the
fall."

"No, that is when you have it neatly snodded and the firelight plays about
your head."

She laughed, flushing. "You will be forever at your foolishness, Kenn. I
thought you meant the tree tips."

"Is the truth foolishness?"

"You are a lover, Kennie. Other folks don't see that when they look at
me."

"Other folks are blind," I maintained, stoutly.

"If you see all that I will be sure that what they say is true and love is
blind."

"The wise man is the lover. He sees clear for the first time in his life.
The sun shines for him--and her. For them the birds sing and the flowers
bloom. For them the world was made. They----"

"Whiles talk blethers," she laughed.

"Yes, they do," I admitted. "And there again is another sign of wisdom.
Your ponderous fool talks pompous sense always. He sees life in only one
facet. Your lover sees its many sides, its infinite variety. He can laugh
and weep; his imagination lights up dry facts with whimsical fancies; he
dives through the crust of conventionality