very commonplace, quite respectable looking man. Afterwards he drew
a pipe from his pocket, carefully filled and lighted it, took his
umbrella from the seat where it had been lying, and walked away.

Had it been their meeting-place long ago? Had he been wont to tell
her, gazing at her with lover's eyes, how like she was to the statue?
The French sculptor has not to consider Mrs. Grundy. Maybe, the
lady, raising her eyes, had been confused; perhaps for a moment
angry--some little milliner or governess, one supposes. In France
the jeune fille of good family does not meet her lover unattended.
What had happened? Or was it but the vagrant fancy of a middle-aged
bourgeois seeking in imagination the romance that reality so rarely
gives us, weaving his love dream round his changeless statue?

In one of Ibsen's bitter comedies the lovers agree to part while they
are still young, never to see each other in the flesh again. Into
the future each will bear away the image of the other, godlike,
radiant with the glory of youth and love; each will cherish the
memory of a loved one who shall be beautiful always. That their
parting may not appear such wild nonsense as at first it strikes us,
Ibsen shows us other lovers who have married in the orthodox fashion.
She was all that a mistress should be. They speak of her as they
first knew her fifteen years ago, when every man was at her feet. He
then was a young student, burning with fine ideals, with enthusiasm
for all the humanities.

They enter.

What did you expect? Fifteen years have passed--fifteen years of
struggle with the grim realities. He is fat and bald. Eleven