did love me. You always seemed so
glad when I came and sorry when I left; and you enjoyed talking to me,
and we understood each other, and were happy together. Can you deny
that?"

"No; it is all true. I never enjoyed talking with anybody more than with
you; and I certainly never in my life met any one who understood my ways
of looking at things as thoroughly as you do, nor any one who entered so
completely into all my moods. As a friend you are most satisfactory to
me, as a comrade most delightful; but I can not help thinking that love
is something more than that."

"But it isn't," cried Cecil eagerly; "that is just where lots of women
make such a mistake. They wait and wait for love all their lives; and
find out too late that they passed him by years ago, without recognising
him, but called him by some wrong name, such as friendship and the
like."

"I wonder if you are right."

"I am sure that I am. Women who are at all romantic, have such
exaggerated ideas as to what love really is. Like the leper of old, they
ask for some great thing to work the wonderful miracle upon their lives;
and so they miss the simple way which would lead them to happiness."

Elisabeth felt troubled and perplexed. "I enjoy your society," she said,
"and I adore your genius, and I pity your loneliness, and I long to help
your weakness. Is this love, do you think?"

"Yes, yes; I am certain of it."

"I thought it would be different," said Elisabeth sadly; "I thought that
when it did come it would transform the whole world, just as religion
does, and that all things would become new. I thought it would turn out
to be the thing that we are longing for when the beauty of nature makes
us feel sad with a longing we know not for what. I thought it would
change life's dusty paths into golden pavements, and earth's commonest
bramble-bush into a magic briar-rose."

"And it hasn't?"

"No; everything is just the same as it was before I met you. As far as I
can see, there is no livelier emerald twinkling in the grass of the Park
than there ever is at the end of July, and no purer sapphire melting
into the Serpentine."

Cecil laughed lightly. "You are as absurdly romantic as a school-girl!
Surely people of our age ought to know better than still to believe in
fairyland; but, as I have told you before, you are dreadfully young for
your age in some things."

"I suppose I am. I still do believe in fairyland--at least I did until
ten minutes ago."