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sordid when told in a divorce court. This is romance only to us, Jimmy.”

“And we are all who matter,” he replied stoutly.

“At the moment,” she agreed.

He reached across the table and squeezed her hand, and she smiled wistfully.

“Let’s change the subject. Can you darn socks?” he asked.

“Romance, as we understand it, can never be synonymous with marriage,” she went on, ignoring his persiflage.

“So you really have the wisdom to answer Adam’s question?” he laughed. “And how do we understand romance?”

“How?” she asked, with quaint bitterness. “As a thrilling whirlpool of hopes, longings, difficulties, theatrical posturings and a persistent belief in earthbound angels. Hm! Hymeneal propinquity would strip the wings from the noblest angel in all the Heavens!”

“You don’t believe in marriage, then?”

“For sane people, for those who are content to realise that Love’s chrysanthemum is merely a glorified daisy, I think marriage the ideal state. But for half—tamed animals, like you and me, I think it is hell.”

“Pat!”

“What else are we?’ she insisted. “You may write of soul-mates, Divine purpose, the Great Ultimate, the fulfilment of the ages; but in your heart of hearts you know, and I know, that all this—this tete-a-tete, my paraphernalia in the other room—are the results of a naked physical attraction—the identical motive which actuated Adam and Eve and all their ancestors. At this very moment we are regretting Eden and looking forward, with idiotic avidity, to the difficulties of to-morrow and all the other to-morrows. We are fools, Jimmy—just Nature’s fools!”

He smiled at her indulgently as he stirred his