"The ass brays acknowledgments," answered Bunsey meekly, helping himself to another cigar. "You may rely on my loyal and devoted interest. The fact that I have heard your secret twice before to-day shall not open my lips or cause me to violate your trust." Notwithstanding my attitude of indifference I was greatly troubled by Bunsey's unfeeling suggestion. Could it be possible that I had mistaken my own heart? Was I, yielding, as I had believed, to the first strong passion of my life, only deluding myself with a remembrance of my vanished youth? I dismissed the thought impatiently. For, after all, was not Bunsey a hopeless cynic, a fellow without a single emotion of the ennobling sentiment of man toward woman, a sordid story-teller, who created characters for money, wrecked homes, committed literary murders, played unfeelingly on the tenderest sensibilities, and boasted openly that the only angels were those made by a stroke of the pen and retailed at department store book-counters? And while thus reasoning Phyllis came to me, so winsome in her girlish beauty, so radiant in the happiness I had infused into her life, so joyous in the pleasures of the present, that I laughed at my own doubts, reproached myself for my own unworthy suspicions, and straightway forgot both Bunsey and his evil promptings. Love at eight and forty is a very pleasant and indolent emotion, marking the most delightful stage in the progress of the great human passion. At twenty-five we talk it; at thirty-five we act it; at forty-five it is pleasant to sit down and think about it. The very young man loves without really analyzing. Ten years later he analyzes without really loving. In another decade he has compounded the proportions of love and analysis, and becomes, under favoring conditions, the most dangerous and hence the most acceptable of suitors. The man in middle life takes his adored one tolerantly, and keeps his reservations to himself. In the ordinary course of events he has acquired a certain knowledge of feminine character, he knows the rocks and the shoals of love, and, skillful pilot that he is, he avoids them. He is sure of his course, master of his equipment. If he errs at all--but I anticipate.