hing that had ever happened to her and longed to
break it with some speech so brilliant that he would never forget it.
Little thrills of joy, like tiny flames, ran over her, and the light in
her eyes shone on him through the quivering dusk of her lashes. Even
when she looked away from him, she could still see his expression of
tender gaiety, as though he were trying in vain to laugh himself free
from an impulse that was fast growing too strong for him. What she did
not know was that the spring was calling to him through her youth and
sex as it was calling through the scented winds and the young buds on
the trees. She was as ignorant that she offered herself to him through
her velvet softness, through the glow in her eyes, through her quivering
lips, as the flower is that it allures the bee by its perfume. So subtly
did Life use her for its end that the illusion of choice in first love
remained unimpaired. Though she was young desire incarnate, he saw in
her only the unique and solitary woman of his dreams.

"Do you come here every day?" he asked, and immediately the blue sky and
the octagonal market spun round at his voice.

As nothing but commonplace words would come to her, she was obliged at
last to utter them. "Oh, no, not every day."

"I've always had a tremendous sympathy for women because they have to
market and housekeep. I wonder if they won't revolt some time?"

This was so heretical a point of view that she tried earnestly to
comprehend it; but all the time her heart was busy telling her how
different he was from every other man--how much more interesting! how
immeasurably superior! Her attention, in spite of her efforts at serious
thought, would not wander from the charm of his voice, from the peculiar
whimsical trick of his smile, which lifted his mouth at one corner and
made odd little wrinkles come and go about his eyes. His manner was full
of sudden nervous gestures which surprised and enchanted her. All other
men were not merely as clay beside him--they were as straw! Seeing that
he was waiting for a response, she made a violent endeavour to think of
one, and uttered almost inaudibly: "But don't they like it?"

"Ah, that's just it," he answered as seriously as if she hadn't known
that her speech bordered on imbecility. "Do they really like it? or have
they been throwing dust in our eyes through the centuries?" And he gazed
at her as eagerly as if he were hanging upon her answer. Oh, if she
could onl