Lady as she walked by the Philosopher over the lawn toward the house.
"The two are no more the same sort--than----" he looked toward the
garden for inspiration and found it, as many a man before him has found
it, when searching after similes for the women he knows--"than those
yellow tiger-lilies of yours are like--a clump of hepaticas that you
find in the woods in spring."

* * * * *

That evening the Gay Lady had left us, as she sometimes does, and gone
in to play soft, old-time melodies on my piano, while the rest of us sat
silently listening. The men know well enough that it is useless to
follow her in when she goes to play in the twilight--if they did she
would send them back again, or stop playing. And as it is worth much to
hear her play when she has a certain mood upon her, nobody does anything
to break the spell. Sometimes the listening grows almost painful, but
before we are quite overwrought she comes back and makes us gay again.

"When I was a boy," said the Skeptic, very softly to me, after the music
stopped, "I used to pick out men to admire and follow about, and
consume myself with wishing that some day I could be like them. How
could a girl like that one we've had here to-day look at our Gay Lady
and not want to copy her to the last hair on her head?"

"There are some things which can't be copied," I returned. "She is one
of them."

The Skeptic gave me a grateful glance. "You never said a truer thing
than that," said he.