r me. I had never in all my life even
dreamed of smoking a cigarette. To a reserved, thoughtful, and scientific
mind there is, about a packet of cigarettes, something undignified,
something vaguely frolicsome.

When I paid her for them I felt as though, for the first time in my life,
I had let myself go.

Oddly enough, in this uneasy feeling of gaiety and abandon, a curious
sensation of exhilaration persisted.

We had quite a merry little contretemps when I tried to light my
cigarette and the match went out, and then _she_ struck another match,
and we both laughed, and _that_ match was extinguished by her breath.

Instantly I quoted: "'Her breath was like the new-mown hay--'"

"Mr. Smith!" she said, flushing slightly.

"'Her eyes,' I quoted, 'were like the stars at even!'"

"You don't mean _my_ eyes, do you?"

I took a puff at my unlighted cigarette. It also smelled like recently
mown hay. I felt that I was slipping my cables and heading toward an
unknown and tempestuous sea.

"What time are you free, Mildred?" I asked, scarcely recognising my own
voice in such reckless apropos.

She shyly informed me.

I struck a match, relighted my cigarette, and took one puff. That was
sufficient: I was adrift. I realised it, trembled internally, took
another puff.

"If," said I carelessly, "on your way home you should chance to stroll
along the path beyond the path that leads to the path which--"

I paused, checked by her bewildered eyes. We both blushed.

"Which way do you usually go home?" I asked, my ears afire.

[Illustration: "'Which way do you usually go home?' I asked."]

She told me. It was a suitably unfrequented path.

So presently I strolled thither; and seated myself under the trees in a
bosky dell.

Now, there is a quality in boskiness not inappropriate to romantic
thoughts. Boskiness, cigarettes, a soft afternoon in June, the hum of
bees, and the distant barking of the seals, all these were delicately
blending to inspire in me a bashful sentiment.

A specimen of _Papilio turnus_, di-morphic form, _Glaucus_, alighted near
me; I marked its flight with scientific indifference. Yet it is a rare
species in Bronx Park.

A mock-orange bush was in snowy bloom behind me; great bunches of
wistaria hung over the rock beside me.

The combination of these two exquisite perfumes seemed to make the
boskiness more bosky.

There was an unaccustomed and sportive lightness to my step when I rose
to meet Mildr