he marries her."

"How can she?" asked Carlotta.

This was a staggering question.

"I don't know," said I, "but she dus."

"Then before I marry a man in England I must love him? But I shall die
without a husband!"

"I don't think so," said I.

"I must begin soon," said Carlotta, with a laugh.

A sinuous motion of her serpentine young body enabled her to bend her
face down to mine.

"Shall I love Seer Marcous? But how shall I know when I am in love?"

"When you appreciate the exceeding impropriety of discussing the matter
with your humble servant," I replied.

"When a girl is in love she does not speak about it?"

"No, my dear. She lets concealment like a worm i' the bud feed on her
damask cheek."

"Then she gets ugly?"

"That's it," I answered. "You keep on looking in the glass, and when you
perceive you are hideous then you'll know you are in love."

"But when I am so ugly you will not want me," she objected. "So it is no
use falling in love with you."

"You have a more logical mind than I imagined," said I.

"What is a logical mind?" asked Carlotta.

"It is the antiseptic which destroys the bacilli of unreason whereby
true happiness is vivified."

"I do not understand," she said.

"I should be vastly surprised if you did," I laughed.

"Would you like me to marry and go away and leave you?" asked Carlotta,
after a long pause.

"I suppose," I said with a sigh, "that some tin-pot knight will drive
up one of these days to the castle in a hansom-cab and carry off my
princess."

"Then you'll be sorry?"

"My dear," I answered, "do not let us discuss such gruesome things on an
afternoon like this."

"You would like better for me to go on playing at being your Turkish
wife?"

"Infinitely," said I.

Alas! The day is sped. I have asked the fleeting moment to tarry, and it
laughed, and shook its gossamer wings at me, and flew by on its mad race
into eternity.

As we lay, a cicada set up its shrilling quite close to us. I slipped my
head from Carlotta's lap and idly parted the rank grass in search of the
noisy intruder, and by good luck I found him. I beckoned Carlotta, who
glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath,
we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood
alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger,
and every now and then making his corslet vibrate passionately. On the
top of a blade of grass sat a brown l