“So you would challenge the gay deceiver to mortal combat? Weapons, a fan against a pocket-comb, across a skein of sewing-silk. Hail! O Attila! scourge of Flirtationdom! Newport will be depopulated when your plan prevails.” “Depopulated of gay deceivers and their victims. You and I, Miss Clara and Paulding, would be left to weep over the slain and strew their graves with old bouquet leaves. But pity the sorrows of the young heroes, murdered now and unavenged, while their murderesses sing their siren song to annual freshmen.” “But why do your freshmen listen to siren songs?” “Freshmen love music and are unfamiliar with sirens. And even men no longer so fresh, who have been forced to hear sorrowful songs, may mistake siren song for angel song. Harmony is so rare and so heavenly. We hear it one day, and land. We meet no chilling reception; the siren sings on sweetly. The dewy violet and the thornless rose are still worn and the young heart or the weary heart has but one word more of passion to say. The third and last degree of lovers’ lessons waits to be taken, lip to lip. But--_Halte là!_ ‘Will you walk out of my parlour?’ says the spider to the fly. ‘Certainly, fair tarantula, since you insist upon it.’ Another freshman is on the threshold, or another not-so-very-fresh may be wooed into the web. Continue, pretty dear, your wanton wiles. Sing away, Siren, seeming angel. We are out. _Adieu!_” and Dunstan, whose cigar was smoked to the thick, drew an immense puff and breathing out a perfect ring, deposited it upon his engagement finger. He held up his hand, while the smoke slowly drifted away in the still, warm air. Diana laughed. “Very well done, the ring and the description. But the termination was rather too contemptuous for the poetry of the beginning.” “Was it?” said he. “Contempt is not a pleasant feeling. I supposed myself too old to express, if not to have it.” “Did you mean your history,” asked Diana, “for the epitaph of a dead love?” “A dead love? No! Diana, no! It was the _hic jacet_ on the cenotaph of a hundred buried flirtations--my own and other men’s. Not all of them can chisel the inscription as coolly as I do, nor be as indulgent as I am to the memory of the names inscribed. But love! Love is undying!” As he said this, they heard a little rustle and a sigh near them. They turned. It was Miss Milly Center. She had heard, perhaps, all the conversation. She rose and seemed about to speak, but her effort ended in something like a sob, and two rather well-made tears started and overran her cheeks. Just then a cheerful voice came over the hill: “‘Oh, Susannah! don’t you cry for me----’” and a very shiny glazed hat with a black ribbon, such as is some men’s ideal of “the thing” for a head-piece at a water-party, appeared. This hat was on the top of Billy Dulger. “I was looking for you, Miss Milly,” he cried, “and wondering where you had wandered to.”