had I not at once pretended to hold an ardent interest in every girl I
met. This seems strange now, but from the age of fourteen up to the
age of twenty that was my way of regarding the girls I met, and even
today I fear my attitude toward them has altered but slightly, for
now, although I no longer tend to care when I do not, nor make love as
a matter of course, I find it is the easiest attitude to assume toward
most women. It is the simplest to slip into, just as I have certainly
found it the one from which it is most difficult to escape, But I
never seem to remember that until it is too late. A classmate of mine
once said to me: "Royal, you remind me of a man walking along a road
with garden gates opening on each side of it. Instead of keeping to
the road, you stop at every gate, and say: 'Oh! what a pretty garden!
I'll just slip in there, and find out where that path will take me.'
And then--you're either thrown out, and the gate slammed after you, or
you lose yourself in a maze and you can't get out--until you break
out. But does that ever teach you a lesson? No! Instead of going ahead
along the straight and narrow way, and keeping out of temptation, you
halt at the very next gate you come to, just as though you had never
seen a gate before, and exclaim: 'Now, this _is_ a pretty garden, and
_what_ a neat white fence! I really must vault in and take a look
round.' And so the whole thing is gone over again."

I confess there may be some truth in what he said, but the trouble I
find with the straight and narrow way is that there's not room enough
in it for two. And, then, it is only fair to me to say that some of
the gardens were really most beautiful, and the shade very deep and
sweet there, and the memories of the minutes I passed in them were
very refreshing when I went back to the dust of the empty road. And no
one, man or woman, can say that Royal Macklin ever trampled on the
flowers, or broke the branches, or trespassed in another man's private