Was it only Teddy’s fancy--the fancy of every lover since the world was created--that everything, animate and inanimate, was jealous of him? Streets seemed to blaze at her coming. Sparrows flew down and chirped noisily in the gutters, as though they felt that where she was there should be singing. Famished trees shivered and broke their silence, mumbling hoarse apologies: “It isn’t our fault Winter’s given us colds in the head. If we had our way, we’d be leafy for you.” Years later Teddy looked back and questioned, was it love that the little boy felt that winter’s morning? He had experienced what the grown world calls real love by then, and yet he couldn’t see the difference, except that real love is more afraid, thinks more of itself and is more exacting. If love be a divine uplifting, a desirable madness, a mirage of fine deception which exists only in the lover’s brain, then he felt it that morning. And he felt it in all its goodness, without the manifold doubts as to ulterior motives, without the unstable tenderness which so swiftly changes to utterest cruelty, and without the need to crush in order to make certain. In his love of Vashti he came nearer to the white standards of chivalry than was ever again to be his lot In later years he asked himself, was she really so incredibly beautiful? Did her step have the lightness, her face the bewitching power, her voice the gentleness he had imagined? By that time he had learnt the cynical wisdom which wonders, “What is this hand that I hold so fast, more than any other hand? What are these lips? Flesh---there are others as warm and beautiful Is this meeting love or is it chance?” He was far from that blighting caution yet Merely to be allowed to serve her, if it could help her to be allowed to die for her, to be allowed to give his all--he asked no more. He carried his all in an ill-wrapped parcel beneath his arm. She observed it. “Holloa! Brought your luggage?” “Not my luggage.” “Then what?” He flushed. “Can’t tell you yet.” “Oh, but tell me!” “I--I couldn’t here--not where every one’s passing.” “Something for me?” she guessed. He nodded. Higher up the street, outside a public house, a hansom cab was standing. “I must know,” she laughed. “Can’t wait another second. We’ll be alone in that.” “Where to?” asked the cabby, peering through the trap. “Anywhere. Piccadilly Circus.” The doors closed as if folded by invisible hands. The window lowered. They were in a little house which fled across main thoroughfares, up side streets, round corners. He was more alone with her than ever. He could feel the warmth of her furs. He could hear her draw her breath. “Well?” she asked. As he placed it in her lap the parcel jingled. “I saved it,” he explained, “for us--for you and me, because of what somebody told me.” She tore the paper off. In her hands was a wooden box with MARRIAGE inked across it. “Marriage!” She raised it to her ear and shook it “Money!”