What matter if he be but a half-witted puppet?
He is fair.

What matter if he be foolish, faithless, forgetful, inconstant, changeable as the tide of the sea?
He is young.

His youth shall cover all his deficiencies and wipe out all his sins! Imperial love, monarch and despot of the human soul, is become the servant of boys for the wage of a girl's first thoughtless kiss.

If that is love let it perish out of the world, with the bloom of the wood violet in spring, with the flutter of the bright moth in June, with the song of the nightingale and the call of the mocking-bird, with all things that are fair and lovely and sweet but for a few short days.

If that is love, why then love never made a wound, nor left a scar, nor broke a heart in this easy-going rose-garden of a world.