"

"Paul, you have already lived and loved, where there is no rent to pay
and where the clothing worn is not worth mentioning; as for the food and
the drink in that delectable land, nature provides them both. I don't
see why you need to take thought of the morrow; all you have to do is to
take passage for some South Sea Island, and let the world go by."

"But the price of the ticket, my friend; where is that to come from? To
be sure I'm only a bachelor, and have none but myself to consider. What
would I do if I had a wife and family to provide for?"

"You'd do as most other fellows in the same predicament do; you'd
provide for them as well as you could; and if that wasn't sufficient,
you'd desert them, or blow your brains out and leave them to provide for
themselves."

"An old bachelor is a rather comfortable old party. I'm satisfied with
my manifest destiny; but I'm rather sorry for old maids--aren't you?"

"That depends; of course everything in life depends; some of the most
beautiful, the most blessed, the most bountifully happy women I have
ever known were old maids; I propose to be one myself--if I live long
enough!"

After an interlude, during which the bees boomed among the
honey-blossoms, the birds caroled on the boughs, and the two artists
laughed softly as they chatted at their delightful work, Paul resumed:

"Do you know, Miss. Juno, this anti-climax strikes me as being
exceedingly funny? When I met you the other day, I felt as if I'd met my
fate. I know well enough that I'd felt that way often before, and
promptly recovered from the attack. I certainly never felt it in the
same degree until I came face to face with you. I was never quite so
fairly and squarely face to face with any one before. I came here
because I could not help myself. I simply had to come, and to come at
once. I was resolved to propose to you and to marry you without a cent,
if you'd let me. I didn't expect that you'd let me, but I felt it my
duty to find out. I'm dead sure that I was very much in love with
you--and I am now; but somehow it isn't that spoony sort of love that
makes a man unwholesome and sometimes drives him to drink or to suicide.
I suppose I love you too well to want to marry you; but God knows how
glad I am that we have met, and I hope that we shall never really part
again."

"Paul!"--Miss. Juno's rather too pallid cheeks were slightly tinged with
rose; she seemed more than ever to belong to that fair garden, t