"Of course," I said dryly. "But in the end my sweetheart, plighted to me for all eternity, had to choose betwixt her lover and something she had which he much desired. She sighed, deliberated long--full five seconds I vow--and in end played traitor to love. She was desolated to lose me, but the alternative was not to be endured. She sacrificed me for a raspberry tart. So was shattered young love's first dream. 'Tis my only consolation that I snatched the tart and eat it as I ran. Thus Phyllis lost both her lover and her portion. Ah, those brave golden days! The world, an unexplored wonder, lay at my feet. She was seven, I was nine." "Oh." There was an odd little note of relief in the velvet voice that seemed to reproach me for a brute. I was forever forgetting that the ways of 'Toinette Westerleigh were not the ways of Aileen Macleod. The dying sun flooded the topmost branches of the forest foliage. My eyes came round to the aureole which was their usual magnet. "When the sun catches it 'tis shot with glints of gold." "It is indeed very beautiful." "In cloudy weather 'tis a burnished bronze." She looked at me in surprise. "Bronze! Surely you are meaning green?" "Not I, bronze. Again you might swear it russet." "That will be in the autumn when they are turning colour just before the fall." "No, that is when you have it neatly snodded and the firelight plays about your head." She laughed, flushing. "You will be forever at your foolishness, Kenn. I thought you meant the tree tips." "Is the truth foolishness?" "You are a lover, Kennie. Other folks don't see that when they look at me." "Other folks are blind," I maintained, stoutly. "If you see all that I will be sure that what they say is true and love is blind." "The wise man is the lover. He sees clear for the first time in his life. The sun shines for him--and her. For them the birds sing and the flowers bloom. For them the world was made. They----" "Whiles talk blethers," she laughed. "Yes, they do," I admitted. "And there again is another sign of wisdom. Your ponderous fool talks pompous sense always. He sees life in only one facet. Your lover sees its many sides, its infinite variety. He can laugh and weep; his imagination lights up dry facts with whimsical fancies; he dives through the crust of conventionality to the realities of life. 'Tis the lover keeps this old world young. The fire of youth, of eternal laughing youth, runs flaming through his blood. His days are radiant, his nights enchanted." "I am thinking you quite a poet." "Was there ever a better subject for a poem? Life would be poetry writ into action if all men were lovers--and all women Aileens."