while you spoke I was thinking of those Saturday nights
when your name was up for an oration or a debate before the Eclectics,
and you would stay away and pay the fine rather than brave an audience."

"The tooth of Time," he reminded her, "has since then written wrinkles
on my azure brow. The years slip away fugacious, and Time that brings
forth her children only to devour them grins most hellishly, for Time
changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of
irony,--and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle? You
wouldn't have me put on exhibition as a _lusus naturae_?"

"Oh, but I wish you had not altered so entirely!" Pauline sighed.

"At least, you haven't," he declared. "Of course, I would be compelled
to say so, anyhow. But in this happy instance courtesy and veracity
come skipping arm-in-arm from my elated lips." And, indeed, it seemed
to him that Pauline was marvelously little altered. "I wonder now," he
said, and cocked his head, "I wonder now whose wife I am talking to?"

"No, Jack, I never married," she said quietly.

"It is selfish of me," he said, in the same tone, "but I am glad of
that."

And so they sat a while, each thinking.

"I wonder," said Pauline, with that small plaintive voice which
Charteris so poignantly remembered, "whether it is always like this?
Oh, do the Overlords of Life and Death ALWAYS provide some obstacle to
prevent what all of us have known in youth was possible from ever
coming true?"

And again there was a pause which a delectable and lazy conference of
leaves made eloquent.

"I suppose it is because they know that if it ever did come true, we
would be gods like them." The ordinary associates of John Charteris,
most certainly, would not have suspected him to be the speaker. "So
they contrive the obstacle, or else they send false dreams--out of the
gates of horn--and make the path smooth, very smooth, so that two
dreamers may not be hindered on their way to the divorce-courts."

"Yes, they are jealous gods! oh, and ironical gods also! They grant
the Dream, and chuckle while they grant it, I think, because they know
that later they will be bringing their playthings face to face--each
married, fat, inclined to optimism, very careful of decorum, and
perfectly indifferent to each other. And then they get their
fore-planned mirth, these Overlords of Life and Death. 'We gave you,'
they chuckle, 'the loveliest and greatest thing infinity co