ittle Juliet--a most reserved,
discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's
serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if
uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which
he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied,
she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and
then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and
vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and
made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last another cicada set
up a louder note some yards away and, without a nod or a sign, Juliet
skipped off into space, leaving the most disconsolate little Romeo of
a grasshopper you ever beheld. He gave vent to a dismal failure of a
vibration and hopped to the foot of the faithless lady's bower.

Carlotta broke into a merry laugh and clapped her hands.

"I am so glad."

"She is the most graceless hussy imaginable," I cried. "There was he
grinding his heart out for her, and just because a more brazen-throated
scoundrel came upon the scene she must needs leave our poor friend in
the lurch. She has no more heart than my boot, and she will come to a
bad end."

"But he was such a fool," retorted my sage damsel, with a flash of
laughter in her dark eyes. "If he wanted her, why didn't he go up and
take her?"

"Because he is a gentleman, a cicada of fine and delicate feeling."

"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta. "He was a fool. It served him right. She grew
tired of waiting."

"You believe, then," said I, "in marriage by capture?"

I explained and discoursed to her of the matrimonial habits of the
Tartar tribes.

"Yes," said Carlotta. "That is sense. And it must be such fun for the
girl. All that, what you call it?--wooing?--is waste of time. I like
things to happen, quick, quick, one after the other--or else--"

"Or else what?"

"To do nothing, nothing but lie in the sun, like this afternoon."

"Yes," said I dreamily, after I had again thrown myself by her side.
"Like this afternoon."

I sit at my window and look out upon the strip of beach, the hauled-up
fishing boats and the nets hung out to dry looming vague in the
starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a few yards beyond;
and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that has recurred all the
evening.

But why should I be mad? For filling my soul with God's utmost glory of
earth and sea and sky?