must
seem a disappointment.

So I, too, with the rest of the world, was following in the wake of the
magical music. The lie it was drawing me by is perhaps Spring's oldest,
commonest lie,--the lying promise of the Perfect Woman, the Quite
Impossible She. Who has not dreamed of her,--who that can dream at
all? I suppose that the dreams of our modern youth are entirely
commercial. In the morning of life they are rapt by intoxicating
visions of some great haberdashery business, beckoned to by the
voluptuous enticements of the legal profession, or maybe the Holy Grail
they forswear all else to seek is a snug editorial chair. These quests
and dreams were not for me. Since I was man I have had but one
dream,--namely, Woman. Alas! till this my thirtieth year I have found
only women. No! that is disloyal, disloyal to my First Love; for this
is sadly true,--that we always find the Golden Girl in our first love,
and lose her in our second.

I wonder if the reader would care to hear about my First Love, of whom
I am naturally thinking a good deal this morning, under the
demoralising influences of the fresh air, blue sky, and various birds
and flowers. More potent intoxicants these than any that need licenses
for their purveyance, responsible--see the poets--for no end of human
foolishness.

I was about to tell the story of my First Love, but on second thoughts
I decide not. It will keep, and I feel hungry, and yonder seems a
dingle where I can lie and open my knapsack, eat, drink, and doze among
the sun-flecked shadows.

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH I EAT AND DREAM

The girl we go to meet is the girl we have met before. I evolved this
sage reflection, as, lost deep down in the green alleys of the dingle,
having fortified the romantic side of my nature with sandwiches and
sherry, I lazily put the question to myself as to what manner of girl I
expected the Golden Girl to be. A man who goes seeking should have
some notion of what he goes out to seek. Had I any ideal by which to
test and measure the damsels of the world who were to pass before my
critical choosing eye? Had I ever met any girl in the past who would
serve approximately as a model,--any girl, in fact, I would very much
like to meet again? I was very sleepy, and while trying to make up my
mind I fell asleep; and lo! the sandwiches and sherry brought me a
dream that I could not but consider of good omen. And this was the
dream.

I thought my quest had brou