The young man smiled and frowned and sighed and laughed in the space of thirty seconds--something of a feat in the way of emotional gymnastics. The freakish feminine nature perplexed him as it had perplexed Adam, and he could not understand this rapid change from poetry to prose. How could it be otherwise, when he was but five-and-twenty, and engaged for the first time? Threescore years and ten is all too short a time to learn what woman really is, and every student leaves this world with the conviction that of the thousand sides which the female of man presents to the male of woman, not one reveals the being he desires to know. There is always a deep below a deep; a veil behind a veil, a sphere within a sphere. “It's most remarkable,” said the puzzled man in this instance. “What is?” asked the enigma promptly. To avoid an argument which he could not sustain, Archie switched his on to the weather. “This day in September; one could well believe that it is still the month of roses.” “What! With those wilted hedges and falling leaves and reaped fields and golden haystacks, and--and--” She glanced around for further illustrations in the way of contradiction. “I can see all those things, dear, and the misplaced day also!” “Misplaced?” “July day slipped into September. It comes into the landscape of this autumn month, as does love into the hearts of an elderly couple who feel too late the supreme passion.” Lucy's eyes swept the prospect, and the spring-like sunshine, revealing all too clearly the wrinkles of aging Nature, assisted her comprehension. “I understand. Yet youth has its wisdom.” “And old age its experience. The law of compensation, my dearest. But I don't see,” he added reflectively, “what your remark and my answer have to do with the view,” whereat Lucy declared that his wits wandered.