Ethan stretched his arms, chastely clad in striped blue and white madras, yawned expansively, kicked his legs loose from the sheet in which they were entangled, and awoke; awoke to find the sunlight dancing across the room and making radiant blurs of his brushes on the old mahogany bureau; awoke to find a robin fervently launching his brief ballad in through the window from the branches just outside; awoke to find himself in a new and very wonderful world, a world populated by a girl with violet eyes, a reiterating robin, and himself!

He was in love!

Knowledge of the fact came to him with a heart-clutching abruptness. He had gone to sleep last night without premonition; he awoke now to a startling illumination of mind. Whence had the tidings come? From the dancing sunlight streaming across the old boards? From the scented breeze that stirred the leaves out there? From the perfervid gossip of the swelling throat? Who could tell? And yet there it was, that knowledge, as real as the green summer earth awaiting him, as much a part of his life as the breath he drew!

He lay for a long while with his hands clasped under his head and gazed out into the beautiful green and golden and azure world, with a happy smile on his face, thinking new and ineffable thoughts. It is a glorious thing to find oneself really, wholly in love for the first time, glorious, wonderful, absorbing....

The robin ceased his pÆan and was silent, with his head cocked attentively. Perhaps his ears were better than yours or mine and he heard a song sweeter and more triumphant than any of his own, for after a moment of listening he spread his wings and floated down across sunlit spaces to the orchard.

I wonder if the safety razor was not invented for the man in love. Certain it is that Ethan could never have used any other sort this morning. At times, driven by a mad impatience to be out and away, he shaved frantically, as though he feared that Nature would roll up her landscape and be gone ere he could reach it; at times he stood motionless, gazing unseeingly at the tip of his nose reflected in the old mirror. Now he whistled blithely, only to stop in the middle of a note and relapse into a silent gravity. In short, he exhibited all the symptoms, mental and physical, usually accompanying his disease; temperature increased, pulse at once full and fluttering, respiration erratic, pupils of the eyes slightly dilated, mind apparently affected.

He dressed with unusual care, bewailing the fact that his choice of garments was limited to two suits. Neither blue serge nor gray homespun seemed fitted for the occasion; his heart hankered after purple and fine linen. But at last he was dressed and was hurrying down the creaking staircase to a late breakfast. Forty minutes later he was floating amidst the lilies of Arcady.

*****

That line of stars, dear reader, is the typographic equivalent of three wasted hours in the life of Ethan Parmley,—three empty unhappy hours spent in and about a silly old puddle smelling like an apothecary shop (I am using his own language now) with only a trio of idiotic swans to talk to. The Nymph of the Violet Eyes came not.

And yet he saw her that day, after all; caught a fleeting glimpse of her that at once assuaged and sharpened his hunger. He was on the porch of the Inn after dinner smoking, morosely, when a smart trap swept by from the direction of The Larches. It contained a coachman and two ladies. One of the ladies had violet eyes, though, as her head was turned away from him and partly hidden by a white parasol, he could not have proved it at the moment. As for the other, he couldn’t have said whether she was young or old, fair or dark. The pair of glistening, well-groomed bays left Ethan scant time for observation. In a twinkling the carriage and its precious burden were gone. And although he never left the porch for more than a minute at a time all the rest of that interminable summer afternoon he found no reward. There were other roads leading to The Larches.

The evening mail brought him a note from Vincent Graves:

After supper Ethan drew a chair to the open window of his room, set the lamp precariously on the bureau where the light would fall upon the portfolio in his lap, and replied to Vincent:

It never did.