"Happy Boy!" I cried, "still able to turn water into wine by the divine power of your youth"; and then, turning to the waiter, I ordered a bottle of No. 37. 

 "Wine is the only youth granted to middle age," I continued,—"in vino juventus, one might say; and may you, my dear young friend, long remain so proudly independent of that great Elixir—though I confess that I have met no few young men under thirty who have been excellent critics of the wine-list." 

 As the water warmed him, he began to expand into further confidence, and then he told me the story of his Shelley, if a story it can be called. For, of course, it was simple enough, and the reader has long since guessed that the reason why he wouldn't lose his Shelley for the world was the usual simple reason. 

 I listened to his rhapsodies of HER and HER and HER with an aching heart. How good it was to be young! No wonder men had so desperately sought the secret of Eternal Youth! Who would not be young for ever, for such dreams and such an appetite? 

 Here of course was the very heaven-sent confidant for such an enterprise as mine. I told him all about my whim, just for the pleasure of watching his face light up with youth's generous worship of all such fantastic nonsense. You should have seen his enthusiasm and heard all the things he said. Why, to encounter such a whimsical fellow as myself in this unimaginative age was like meeting a fairy prince, or coming unexpectedly upon Don Quixote attacking the windmill. I offered him the post of Sancho Panza; and indeed what would he not give, he said, to leave all and follow me! But then I reminded him that he had already found his Golden Girl. 

 "Of course, I forgot," he said, with I'm afraid something of a sigh. For you see he was barely twenty, and to have met your ideal so early in life is apt to rob the remainder of the journey of something of its zest. 

 I asked him to give me his idea of what the Blessed Maid should be, to which he replied, with a smile, that he could not do better than describe Her, which he did for the sixth time. It was, as I had foreseen, the picture of a Saint, a Goddess, a Dream, very lovely and pure and touching; but it was not a woman, and it was a woman I was in search of, with all her imperfections on her head. I suppose no boy of twenty really loves a WOMEN, but loves only his etherealised extract of woman, entirely free from earthy adulteration. I noticed the words "pure" and "natural" in constant use by my young friend. 

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