, was
still the face of a middle-aged man, though he had passed, a year ago,
his seventieth birthday. At his feet, Waif, a stray dog, rescued in
memory of Robin, the pointer, was curled up on a rug.

"Well, my boy," he said cheerily, "you've had a good day, I hope?"

"A good day, doctor, I've been in heaven," I answered.

His smile shone out, clear and bright, as it did at a patient's bedside.
"I've been there, too, Ben," he responded, "forty years ago."

"Then why didn't you stay, sir?"

"Because it isn't given to any man to stay longer than a few minutes.
Ah, my boy, you are the mixture of a fighter and a dreamer."

"But suppose," I blushed, for I was a reserved man, though few people
were reserved with Dr. Theophilus, "suppose that your heaven is a
woman?"

"Has it ever been anything else to a man since Adam?" he asked. "Every
man's heaven, and most men's hell, is a woman, my boy. Why, look at old
George Bolingbroke now! He's no longer young, and he's certainly no
longer handsome, yet I've seen him, in his day, stand up straight and
tall in church at Miss Matoaca Bland's side, and look perfectly happy
because he could sing from the same hymn-book. Then a week later, when
she'd thrown him over, I saw him jump up at a supper, and drink
champagne out of the slipper of some variety actress."

"Yet she was right, I suppose, to throw him over?"

"Oh, she was right, I'm not questioning that she was right," he
responded hastily; "but it isn't always the woman who is right, Ben," he
added, "that makes a man's heaven."

"The poor little lady had no slipperful of champagne to fall back on," I
suggested.

"It's a pity she hadn't--for it's as true as the Gospel, that George
Bolingbroke drove her into all this nonsense about the equality of
sexes. Equality, indeed! A man doesn't want to make love to an equal,
but to an angel! Bless my soul, I don't know to save my life, what to
think of Miss Matoaca, except that she's crazy. That's the kindest thing
I can say for her. She's gone now and got into correspondence with some
bloodthirsty, fire-eating woman's rights advocates up North, and she's
actually taken to distributing their indecent pamphlets. She had the
face to leave one on my desk this morning. I'd just taken it in the
tongs before you came in and put it into the fire. There are the ashes
of it," he added sardonically, waving his silver goblet in the direction
of some grey shreds of paper in the fireplace.

"Al