Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/214

 dame. "But one thinks of you as a boy, and sometimes as an idiot."

"Why an idiot?"

"Because you can only be young once. A time will come when you will wish to remember that you were once young. And you will not be able to remember."

"Why won't I?"

"Because you never do anything or start anything that could be worth remembering."

On another occasion she was more direct and Edward could not quite dodge the issue.

"But," he said gravely, "how can a man lead the romantic life you seem to think he ought to lead if he doesn't feel romantic about anybody?"

"Have you never felt romantic about anybody? Tell me the truth."

"Yes," he said, "I have and I do. We were children together. But lately something seems to have happened. Perhaps she thinks that I ought not to have gone away from home for so long to study art."

"And perhaps," said Madame, a little Viciously, "she has interested herself in some more ardent admirer."

"Perhaps," said Edward.

Before the summer ended Madame Beaulieu knew all that there was to be known about the