“Do you remember once in the summer you wired me from Calais to meet you at Maire’s restaurant, meaning to go afterwards to Antoine’s Theatre, and I was very late?  You remember, the evening Rostand was dining at the next table.  Well, it was that evening.  I drove up to Maire’s in time, and I was just getting out of the victoria when a little soldier passed, and our eyes met.  My heart stood still; he had great dark eyes and an exquisite olive-dark face—­a Florentine bronze, Frank, by a great master.  He looked like Napoleon when he was first Consul, only—­less imperious, more beautiful....

“I got out hypnotised, and followed him down the Boulevard as in a dream; the cocher came running after me, I remember, and I gave him a five franc piece, and waved him off; I had no idea what I owed him; I did not want to hear his voice; it might break the spell; mutely I followed my fate.  I overtook the boy in a short time and asked him to come and have a drink, and he said to me in his quaint French way: 

“‘Ce n’est pas de refus!’ (Too good to refuse.)

“We went into a cafe, and I ordered something, I forget what, and we began to talk.  I told him I liked his face; I had had a friend once like him; and I wanted to know all about him.  I was in a hurry to meet you, but I had to make friends with him first.  He began by telling me all about his mother, Frank, yes, his mother.”  Oscar smiled here in spite of himself.

“But at last I got from him that he was always free on Thursdays, and he would be very glad to see me then, though he did not know what I could see in him to like.  I found out that the thing he desired most in the world was a bicycle; he talked of nickel-plated handle bars, and chains—­and finally I told him it might be arranged.  He was very grateful and so we made a rendezvous for the next Thursday, and I came on at once to dine with you.”

“Goodness!” I cried laughing.  “A soldier, a nickel-plated bicycle and a great romantic passion!”

“If I had said a brooch, or a necklace, some trinket which would have cost ten times as much, you would have found it quite natural.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “but I don’t think I’d have introduced the necklace the first evening if there had been any romance in the affair, and the nickel-plated bicycle to me seems irresistibly comic.”

“Frank,” he cried reprovingly, “I cannot talk to you if you laugh; I am quite serious.  I don’t believe you know what a great romantic passion is; I am going to convince you that you don’t know the meaning of it.”

“Fire away,” I replied, “I am here to be convinced.  But I don’t think you will teach me that there is any romance except where there is another sex.”

“Don’t talk to me of the other sex,” he cried with distaste in voice and manner.  “First of all in beauty there is no comparison between a boy and a girl.  Think of the enormous, fat hips which every sculptor has to tone down, and make lighter, and the great udder breasts which the artist has to make small and round and firm, and then picture the exquisite slim lines of a boy’s figure.  No one who loves beauty can hesitate for a moment.  The Greeks knew that; they had the sense of plastic beauty, and they understood that there is no comparison.”