I shall either never marry at all, or--marry royalty."

"Oh, bother ambition! Cheat your horoscope. Marry me. Will you?"

"If you care to follow me," she said, rising again, "you can come and
help me to commit a little theft."

He followed her to an obscure and sheltered corner of a flowery path,
where she stopped before a bush of white lilac.

"There are no keepers in sight, are there? she questioned.

"I don't see any," he said.

"Then allow me to make you a receiver of stolen goods," said she,
breaking off a spray, and handing it to him.

"Thank you. But I'd rather have an answer to my question."

"Isn't that an answer?"

"Is it?"

"White lilac--to the Invisible Prince?"

"The Invisible Prince--Then you _are the black_ domino!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, I suppose so," she consented.

"And you _will_ marry me?"

"I'll tell the aunt I live with to ask you to dinner."

"But will you marry me?"

"I thought you wished me to cheat my horoscope?"

"How could you find a better means of doing so?"

"What! if I should marry Louis Leczinski--?"

"Oh, to be sure. You will have it that I was Louis Leczinski. But, on
that subject, I must warn you seriously--"

"One instant," she interrupted. "People must look other people straight
in the face when they're giving serious warnings. Look straight into my
eyes, and continue your serious warning."

"I must really warn you seriously," said he, biting his lip, "that if
you persist in that preposterous delusion about my being Louis
Leczinski, you'll be most awfully sold. I have nothing on earth to do
with Louis Leczinski. Your ingenious little theories, as I tried to
convince you at the time, were absolute romance."

Her eyebrows raised a little, she kept her eyes fixed steadily on
his--oh, in the drollest fashion, with a gaze that seemed to say "How
admirably you do it! I wonder whether you imagine I believe you. Oh, you
fibber! Aren't you ashamed to tell me such abominable fibs--?"

They stood still, eyeing each other thus, for something like twenty
seconds, and then they both laughed and walked on.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] From _Comedies and Errors_. Reprinted by permission of the John Lane
Company.

WHY WAIT FOR DEATH AND TIME?

BY BERT LESTON TAYLOR

I hold it truth with him who weekly sings
Brave songs of hope,--the music of "The Sphere,"--
That deathless tomes the living present brings:
Great literature is with us year on year.
Books o