The man laughed. “That isn't what I meant. That's different. Love's something that burns and freezes. It fills you and leaves you hungry. It makes you forget all other affections and keeps you always remembering itself. It makes you kindest when it's most cruel. It demands everything you possess; and you're most eager to give when it gives you nothing back. It's hell and it's heaven. No, I'll tell you what it is. It's a small child pulling the wings off a fly, and then crying because it's sorry, and didn't know what it was doing. Ah, Peter, Peter, you haven't met love yet.” He bent forward and tapped him on the arm. “Be wise. Run away when you see love coming.” Peter felt embarrassed. The Faun Man closed one eye and watched him--watched how the sun splashed through the creeping shadows and fell on the boy's flushed face and curly hair. “Here's a little song about love,” he said. “A very high class song, written not improbably by the poet Shelley.” He struck the strings of the mandolin, playing a little jingling introduction and then commenced, lifting his long face to the window in the thatch, singing through his nose and burlesquing all that had happened: “If yer gal ain't all yer thought 'er, And fer everyfing yer've bought 'er She don't seem to care a 'appenny pot o' glue; If she tells yer she won't miss yer And she doesn't want ter kiss yer, Though yer've cuddled 'er from 'Ammersmif ter Kew; If yer little side excurshiums To lands of pink nasturtiums Don't make 'er 'arf so soft as they make you, Why, never get down-'earted, For that's the way love started-- Adam ended wery 'appy--and that's true.” He had scarcely finished, when the golden woman came to the lattice in the thatch. She stood framed there, with the whiteness of the room as a background. Her hands were crossed upon her breast. The shining masses, wrapped about her head and forehead, accentuated her vivid paleness. She looked as idealized as a girl on canvas, put there by her lover in a bid for immortality. She glanced this way and that to discover the Faun Man. She leant out, listening and searching. She could not detect him. “Lorie,” she cried, addressing the garden, “you're unkind. I hate you when you're flippant.” She waited for him to answer. Nothing but silence, and the little river whispering to itself beyond the hedge. “Lorie, I suppose you think I've got no right to talk about being flippant, because---- But I'm not flippant. I like you, and---- But I can't help myself if God made me as I am.” Again she waited. “Lorie, I'll be awfully nice to you if you'll only show yourself. I do so want to see----”