"This," and he kissed her willing lips in the lane, which was
empty save for blackbirds and beetles. "Is any explanation a
clear one?"

"Not to an angel, who requires adoration, but to a woman who--
Let us walk on, Archie, or we shall be late for dinner."

The young man smiled and frowned and sighed and laughed in the
space of thirty seconds--something of a feat in the way of
emotional gymnastics. The freakish feminine nature perplexed him
as it had perplexed Adam, and he could not understand this rapid
change from poetry to prose. How could it be otherwise, when he
was but five-and-twenty, and engaged for the first time?
Threescore years and ten is all too short a time to learn what
woman really is, and every student leaves this world with the
conviction that of the thousand sides which the female of man
presents to the male of woman, not one reveals the being he
desires to know. There is always a deep below a deep; a veil
behind a veil, a sphere within a sphere.

"It's most remarkable," said the puzzled man in this instance.

"What is?" asked the enigma promptly.

To avoid an argument which he could not sustain, Archie switched
his on to the weather.

"This day in September; one could well believe that it is still
the month of roses."