“I quite understand the situation,” I said, sympathetically.

“No doubt,” said Cupid.  “You can also possibly understand how a quarrel between the only two women you ever loved could incapacitate you for your duties.  For ten days after that I was simply incapable of directing the love affairs of the universe properly.  Persons I’d designed for each other were given to others, and a great deal of unhappiness resulted.  There were nine thousand six hundred and seventy-six divorces as the result of that week’s work.  It’s a terrible situation for a well-meaning chap to have to decide between his wife and his mother.”

“Never had it,” said I; “but I can imagine it.”

“Don’t think you can,” sighed Cupid.  “There are situations in real life, sir, which surpass the wildest flights of the imagination.  That is why truth is stranger than fiction.  However,” he added, his face brightening, “it was a useful experience to me in my professional work.  I learned for the first time that when a mother-in-law comes in at the door, intending to remain indefinitely, love flies out at the window.  Or, as Solomon—­I believe it was Solomon.  He wrote Proverbs, did he not?”

“Yes,” said I.  “He and Josh Billings.”

“Well,” vouchsafed Cupid, “I can’t swear as to the authorship of the proverb, but some proverbialist said ’Two is company and three is a crowd.’  I’d never known that before, but I learned it then, and began to stay away from home a little myself, so that we should not be crowded.”

I commended the young man for his philosophy.

“Nevertheless, my dear Dan,” I added, “you ought to be more autocratic.  Knowing that two is company and three otherwise, you have been guilty of allowing many a young couple who have trusted in you to begin house-keeping with an inevitable third person.  We see it every day among the mortals.”

“What has been good enough for me, sir,” the boy returned, with a comical assumption of sternness—­he looked so like a fat baby of three just ready for his bath—­“is good enough for mortals.  When I married Psyche, I brought her home to my mother’s house, and for some nineteen thousand years we lived together.  If Love can stand it, mortals must.”

“Excuse me,” said I, apologetically.  “I have not suffered.  However, in all my study of you mythologians, it has never occurred to me before this that Venus was the goddess of the mother-in-law.”

“You mustn’t blame me for that,” said Cupid, dryly.  “I’m the god of Love; wisdom is out of my province.  For what you don’t know and haven’t learned you must blame Pallas, who is our Superintendent of Public Instruction.  She knows it all—­and she got it darned easy, too.  She sprang forth from the head of Jove with a Ph.D. already conferred upon her.  She looks after the education of the world.  I don’t—­but I’ll wager you anything you please to put up that man gains more real experience under my management than he does from Athena’s department, useful as her work is.”