"You mean they don’t believe in marriage? Well, after all I’ve seen of family life, I don’t believe in marriage either." This was a confession which, by way of bait, many another girl had made to him. "That’s the sort of thing for a girl like Mazie to say," he said coldly, "but not for a girl like you." Concern for himself had rapidly taken the place of concern for her. "Mazie’s way doesn’t impress me any more than the way of all wives," she said, with a delightful gesture of candor. "I think she is more of a slave to men than most married women are. I want to be mistress of myself." His doubts were allayed again. The spring sunshine and Janet’s subtle charm were too strong a team for suspicion to hold out against. As the car sped on through Prospect Park, a delicious breeze, laden with the perfume of flowers and the rising sap of trees, cooled their faces, and fanned their senses warm. "You are a dear little theorizer," he said in a tender vibrating tone. "But theories have no interest for me now. I’m too happy to think about them. I want to think only about you." "Impossible. You don’t know enough about me. We’ve only just met." "Absurd," he said, taking hold of her hands. "We met when the wood nymphs first danced to the pipes of Pan, when the starlight first threw its enchantment on youth, when lovers first threaded their way over wild hills and woodlands by the rays of the crescent moon. We have known each other for ages." "As long as that? Dear me! What an experienced person I must be." Had her acknowledged objection to marriage affected him, after all? "All experiences are nothing to this experience," he said, putting his arms around her and trying to kiss her. She resisted him with a quick, firm movement. All he could do was to seize her hands and give them the rapturous embraces intended for her lips. "Claude!" she called out, more in shyness than reproach. "But I love you!" he cried, retaining her hands by main force. "Since yesterday?" "Yesterday! A million years ago. The moment in which I felt I loved you, Janet, was a world-without-end moment. That is love’s way." "Don’t profane the word love," she said, her voice rich and thrilling. "You can’t love a girl you don’t know." "Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?" he said, quoting the line reproachfully, and releasing her hands as he did so. "Do you believe that love always happens at first sight? What about the feeling that takes hold of us as we slowly learn to know another’s splendid character? The feeling of tenderness and adoration. Isn’t that love, too?" "No, a thousand times, no! Call it friendship, comradeship, esteem, if you like. Call it glorified toleration. But don’t call it love. Love doesn’t come like that. It comes like the swift lightning that embraces a cloud." "How I should love to love like that!" she exclaimed, with a mischievous imitation of rhapsody. "Then you don’t love me?" he demanded.