the
window. Or, as Solomon--I believe it was Solomon. He wrote Proverbs,
did he not?"

"Yes," said I. "He and Josh Billings."

"Well," vouchsafed Cupid, "I can't swear as to the authorship of the
proverb, but some proverbialist said 'Two is company and three is a
crowd.' I'd never known that before, but I learned it then, and began
to stay away from home a little myself, so that we should not be
crowded."

I commended the young man for his philosophy.

"Nevertheless, my dear Dan," I added, "you ought to be more
autocratic. Knowing that two is company and three otherwise, you have
been guilty of allowing many a young couple who have trusted in you to
begin house-keeping with an inevitable third person. We see it every
day among the mortals."

"What has been good enough for me, sir," the boy returned, with a
comical assumption of sternness--he looked so like a fat baby of three
just ready for his bath--"is good enough for mortals. When I married
Psyche, I brought her home to my mother's house, and for some nineteen
thousand years we lived together. If Love can stand it, mortals must."

"Excuse me," said I, apologetically. "I have not suffered. However, in
all my study of you mythologians, it has never occurred to me before
this that Venus was the goddess of the mother-in-law."

"You mustn't blame me for that," said Cupid, dryly. "I'm the god of
Love; wisdom is out of my province. For what you don't know and
haven't learned you must blame Pallas, who is our Superintendent of
Public Instruction. She knows it all--and she got it darned easy, too.
She sprang forth from the head of Jove with a Ph.D. already conferred
upon her. She looks after the education of the world. I don't--but
I'll wager you anything you please to put up that man gains more real
experience under my management than he does from Athena's department,
useful as her work is."

I could not but admit the truth of all that the boy said, and of
course I told him so. To change the subject, which, if pursued, might
lead to an exposure of my own ignorance, I said:

"But, Dan, what interests me most, and pains me most as well, is to
hear that you are separated from Psyche. I do not wish to seem
inquisitive on the subject of a--ah--of a man's family affairs"--I
hesitated in my speech because he seemed such a baby and it was
difficult to take him seriously, as is always the way with Love,
unless we are directly involved--"but you have told me of the
separa