athe."

"Then you do not know what love is."

"Do you?"

"You should know whether I do or not."

"Should I? Then I conclude that you do not. You are growing stout. Your
dress is not in the least neglected. I am certain you enjoy life
thoroughly. No, you have never known love in all its novelistic-poetic
outrageousness. That respectable old passion is a myth."

"You look for signs that only children shew. When an oak dies, it does
not wither and fall at once as a sapling does. Perhaps you will one day
know what it is to love."

"Perhaps so."

"In any case, you will be able to boast of having inspired the passion."

"I hope so--at least, I mean that it is all nonsense. Do look at that
vegetable lobster of a thing, that cactus."

"In order to set off its ugliness properly, you should see yourself
against the background of palms, with that great fan-like leaf for a
halo, and----"

"Thank you. I see it all in my mind's eye by your eloquent description.
You are quite right in supposing that I like compliments; but I am
particular about their quality; and I dont need to be told I am pretty
in comparison with a hideous cactus. You would not have condescended to
make such a speech long ago. You are changed."

"Not toward you, on my honor."

"I did not mean that: I meant toward yourself."

"I am glad you have taken even that slender note of me. I find you
somewhat changed, too."

"I did not know that I shewed it; but it is true. I feel as if Marian
Lind was a person whom I knew once, but whom I should hardly know
again."

"The change in me has not produced that effect. I feel as though Marian
Lind were the history of my life."

"You have become quite a master of the art of saying pretty things. You
are nearly as glib at it as Ned."

"We have the same incentive to admiration."

"The same! You do not suppose that Ned pays _me_ compliments. He never
did such a thing in his life. No: I first discovered his talent in that
direction at Palermo, where I surprised him in an animated discourse
with the dark-eyed daughter of an innkeeper there. That was the first
conversation in Italian I succeeded in following. A week later I could
understand the language almost as well as he. However, dont let us waste
the whole afternoon talking stuff. I want to ask you about your mother.
I should greatly like to call upon her; but she has never made me any
sign since my marriage; and Mrs. Leith Fairfax tells me that she never
a