outed again and in scorn.

"As if I ever would," said she.

"Well, I don't know. Random is a soldier and a baronet; handsome and
agreeable, with a certain amount of talent. What objection can you find
to such a match?"

"One insuperable objection; he isn't you, Archie--darling."

"H'm, the adjective appears to be an afterthought," grumbled the
bachelor; then, when she merely laughed teasingly after the manner of
women, he added moodily:

"No, by Jove, Random isn't me, by any manner of means. I am but a poor
artist without fame or position, struggling on three hundred a year for
a grudging recognition."

"Quite enough for one, you greedy creature."

"And for two?" he inquired softly.

"More than enough."

"Oh, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense!"

"What! when I am engaged to you? Actions speak much louder than remarks,
Mr. Archibald Hope. I love you more than I do money."

"Angel! angel!"

"You said that I was a woman just now. What do, you mean?"

"This," and he kissed her willing lips in the lane, which was empty save
for blackbirds and beetles. "Is any explanation a clear one?"

"Not to an angel, who requires adoration, but to a woman who--Let us
walk on, Archie, or we shall be late for dinner."

The young man smiled and frowned and sighed and laughed in the space of
thirty seconds--something of a feat in the way of emotional gymnastics.
The freakish feminine nature perplexed him as it had perplexed Adam,
and he could not understand this rapid change from poetry to prose. How
could it be otherwise, when he was but five-and-twenty, and engaged
for the first time? Threescore years and ten is all too short a time to
learn what woman really is, and every student leaves this world with the
conviction that of the thousand sides which the female of man presents
to the male of woman, not one reveals the being he desires to know.
There is always a deep below a deep; a veil behind a veil, a sphere
within a sphere.

"It's most remarkable," said the puzzled man in this instance.

"What is?" asked the enigma promptly.

To avoid an argument which he could not sustain, Archie switched his on
to the weather.

"This day in September; one could well believe that it is still the
month of roses."

"What! With those wilted hedges and falling leaves and reaped fields and
golden haystacks, and--and--"

She glanced around for further illustrations in the way of
contradiction.

"I can see all those things, dear, and th