"Look here, Simon, you must let me go my own way in this. In matters of
politics and worldly wisdom and social affairs and honourable dealing
and all that sort of thing I would follow you blindly. You're my chief,
and a kind of elder brother as well. I would do any mortal thing for
you. You know that. But you've no right to try to guide me in this
matter. You know no more about it than my mother. You've had no
experience. You've never let yourself go about a woman in your life.
Lord of Heaven, man, you have never begun to know what it means!"

Oh, dear me! Here was the situation as old as the return of the Prodigal
or the desertion of the trusting village maiden, or any other cliche in
the melodrama of real life. "You are making a fool of yourself," says
Mentor. "Ah," shrieks Telemachus, "but you never loved! You don't know
what love is."

I looked at him whimsically.

"Don't I?"

My thoughts sped back down the years to a garden in France. Her name was
Clothilde. We met in a manner outrageous to Gallic propriety, as I used
to climb over the garden wall to the peril of my epidermis. We loved. We
were parted by stern parents--not mine--and Clothilde was packed off to
the good Sisters who had previously had care of her education. Now she
is fat and happy, and the wife of a banker and the mother of children.

But the romance was sad and bad and mad enough while it lasted; and when
Clothilde was (figuratively) dragged from my arms I cursed and swore and
out-Heroded Herod, played Termagant, and summoned the heavens to fall