CHAPTER I

_Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals
thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame._

_THE SONG OF SOLOMON, VIII, 6._


There is nothing in the world nobler, and lovelier, and more absurd,
than a boy's lovemaking. And the joyousness of it!...

The boy of nineteen, Maurice Curtis, who on a certain June day lay in
the blossoming grass at his wife's feet and looked up into her dark
eyes, was embodied Joy! The joy of the warm earth, of the sunshine
glinting on the slipping ripples of the river and sifting through the
cream-white blossoms of the locust which reared its sheltering branches
over their heads; the joy of mating insects and birds, of the whole
exulting, creating universe!--the unselfconscious, irresponsible, wholly
beautiful Joy of passion which is without apprehension or humor. The
eyes of the woman who sat in the grass beside this very young man,
answered his eyes with Love. But it was a more human love than his,
because there was doubt in its exultation....

The boy took out his watch and looked at it.

"We have been married," he said, "exactly fifty-four minutes."