A REASON FOR LOVE
THEY were no longer young. He was just past and she was almost fifty.
They had made a little wild excursion together. One spring day, when Old Nick was in the air, one of those prematurely warm August days that come sometimes in May, they were walking along the street in Paris, wondering where they should go to dinner.
Oh, no, no! nothing of that kind. Bless you, they had been married so long that they had a grandchild. They were Americans. He happened to be working in Paris. She was his wife.
Still, for all that, the Old Nick was in the air, the eglantine trees were budding in the Luxembourg gardens, and even these two felt they simply had to do something out of the way.
They took the first tram-car that came along and rode out to the end of the line. They were landed at one of the gates of the city, right by the fortifications. There they found a little restaurant and dined on the sidewalk.
They began to talk about love. When two who have been married a quarter of a century talk of love you better listen; you might learn something.
There is just one point brought out in their conversation that I wish to note. It struck me as a rather ingenious one.
"How do you know you love me?" he asked.
"Well," she responded, after reflecting a bit (perhaps if she had been twenty she would have answered by a look only, but now she took the question up seriously, as if anxious to answer herself as well as him), "one reason is that if I'm ever in any trouble, if I should lie sick or have
any calamity happen me, or anything terrible, I should want you, first of all.
"And another reason is that whenever I have any pleasure, when anything in the way of good luck comes, or when I see anything beautiful, my first instinct is to find you, to enjoy it with me."
"Those," he replied, "are really good reasons."
They were silent a bit. The Past is always a third guest when fifty-year-old lovers talk. He was in the thought of both. Then she added:
"And most of all it is the feeling, the certainty, that no matter what I do or say, no matter what happens or can possibly happen, you would be right by me; you would just be for me; you'd just be there, asking no questions, but just be for me, whoever, whatever was against me-till death." END.