t that
time a singular passion for life. No doubt this showed in my face, as I
have seen it in others--a thirsty look, with a rather over-confident
manner. And Doctor West seemed almost to draw back from me as though I
were dangerous, explosive. I dare say I was to him. He had left all
that, had sunk into a sort of intellectual torpor, insulated, as one may
say, from the great dynamos of human life.

"'But why,' he repeated, after looking at me nervously for a long time
and listening to my words. 'Why do you wish to marry her?'

"'Well,' I said, 'I suppose it's because we are in love.'

"'But do you realize the risks?' he asked gently, moving his papers and
books about. 'I'm assuming, of course, that you are a gentleman,' he
went on. 'Always best to marry in one's own class, don't you think?' He
studied my card for a while and looked up suddenly.

"'But suppose I've considered all that,' I suggested. 'Suppose it isn't
so easy to know one's class, as you call it.'

"'Oh,' said he, getting up and walking off into the darkness. 'Oh, if
one is a gentleman ...' His voice tailed off.

"'But,' I persisted, 'I'm not sure I _am_ a gentleman. Really I'm not.'

"'What!' The solitary word came to me out of the shadows with startling
distinctness. I nodded. I sat there on that spindley, gim-crack chair
and stared contemptuously at the paraphernalia of learning and
refinement on the great table, at the silver cigarette box, the bronze
inkstand, the sphinxes and scarabs and cenotaphs, the bits of papyrus
under glass, the books and magnifying glasses. Stared at them and defied
them. I nodded.

"'It is a fact,' I said. 'I have been brought up in a genteel position
and I don't consider the whole business to amount to a heap of beans.'

"I could hear him walking to and fro, and presently, as my eyes grew
accustomed, I made him out, a tall phantom moving in front of other
motionless phantoms. I became aware, too, of a warmth coming from that
quarter and saw him stoop and open the damper of a closed stove, a
studio stove, I think it was.

"'Then what can it matter to you what her parents were?' he demanded,
straightening up and coming into the light.

"'I didn't say I wasn't respectable,' I told him, 'as well as curious.
Anybody would be that.'

"He admitted that was so, and came and sat down.

"'The girl was born at sea, on a ship,' he observed slowly.

"'Well,' I said, 'what of that? So was I.'

"'Oh, is that so?' He loo