taken so _long_!"

Lewis looked down at her brown head, buried against his shoulder, and
asked dreamily:

"Are you spirit and flower, libertine and saint?"

To which Folly replied: "Well, I was the flower-girl once in a great
hit, and I played 'The Nun' last season, you remember. As for spirits, I
had the refusal of one of the spirit parts in the first "Blue Bird"
show, but there were too many of them, so I turned it down. I'd have
felt as though I'd gone back to the chorus. Libertine," she mused
finally--"what _is_ a libertine?"

Lewis's father could have looked at Folly from across the street and
given her a very complete and charming definition for a libertine in one
word. But Lewis had not yet reached that wisdom which tells us that man
learns to know himself last of all. He did not realize that your
true-born libertine never knows it. Whatever Folly's life may have been,
and he thought he had no illusions on that score, he seized upon her
question as proving that she still held the potential bloom of youth and
a measure of innocence.

To do her justice, Folly was young, and also she had asked her question
in good faith. As to innocence--well, what has never consciously
existed, causes no lack. Folly's little world was exceedingly broad in
one way and as narrow in another, but, like few human worlds, it
contained a miracle. The miracle was that it absolutely satisfied her.
She dated happiness, content, and birth itself from the day she went
wrong.