"

Paul rolled a cigarette and offered it to Miss. Juno, in a mild spirit
of bravado. To his delight she accepted it, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world for a girl to do. He rolled another and they
sat down together in the arbor full of contentment.

"Have you never been in love?" asked Paul suddenly.

"Yes, I suppose so. I was engaged once; you know girls instinctively
engage themselves to some one whom they fancy; they imagine themselves
in love, and it is a pleasant fallacy. My engagement might have gone on
forever, if he had contented himself with a mere engagement. He was a
young army officer stationed miles and miles away. We wrote volumes of
letters to each other--and they were clever letters; it was rather like
a seaside novelette, our love affair. He was lonely, or restless, or
something, and pressed his case. Then Mama and Gene--those ideal
lovers--put their feet down and would none of it."

"And you?"

"Of course I felt perfectly wretched for a whole week, and imagined
myself cruelly abused. You see he was a foreigner, without money; he was
heir to a title, but that would have brought him no advantages in the
household."

"You recovered. What became of him?"

"I never learned. He seemed to fade away into thin air. I fear I was not
very much in love."

"I wonder if all girls are like you--if they forget so easily?"

"You have yourself declared that the majority have neither form nor
feature; perhaps they have no feeling. How do men feel about a broken
engagement?"

"I can only speak for myself. There was a time when I felt that marriage
was the inevitable fate of all respectable people. Some one wanted me to
marry a certain some one else. I didn't seem to care much about it; but
my friend was one of those natural-born match-makers; she talked the
young lady up to me in such a shape that I almost fancied myself in love
and actually began to feel that I'd be doing her an injustice if I
permitted her to go on loving and longing for the rest of her days. So
one day I wrote her a proposal; it was the kind of proposal one might
decline without injuring a fellow's feelings in the least--and she did
it!" After a thoughtful pause he continued:

"By Jove! But wasn't I immensely relieved when her letter came; such a
nice, dear, good letter it was, too, in which she assured me there had
evidently been a mistake somewhere, and nothing had been further from
her thoughts than the hope of marrying