n't so much flattered as
astounded. He was not offering me a light honor: The Author's name
meant a great deal. Who, then, was I, a woman named Smith, to say
nay to this miraculous possibility? Was it not rather for me to
accept, meekly, the high gift that the gods in a sportive moment
chose to toss to me? Yea, verily. And yet-- My hand stole to the half
of a thin old foreign coin hidden in my breast.

The Author behaved with exemplary patience and dignity. He went
about his own work and left me to mine, and though I knew I was
under his hawklike watchfulness, his matter-of-fact manner set me at
my ease. You can't dread to meet a man, of a morning, who pays more
attention to his batter-cakes than to you.

I was just beginning to breathe freely, when Doctor Richard Geddes
came over one afternoon, and, finding me in our living-room with
only the Black family to keep me company, flung himself into an
arm-chair, seized Sir Thomas More Black by the scruff, and pulled
his whiskers and rubbed his fur the wrong way until Sir Thomas More
scratched him with thoroughness.

"Get out, then, you black hellion!" growled the doctor. Sir Thomas
More got out. He hadn't wanted to stay in the first place.

"Shall I bind your hand for you?" I asked. But the doctor refused.
He tapped his foot on the floor, and hemmed, and looked at me
strangely. Then:

"Sophronisba Two, you consider me a reasonably decent sort, don't
you?"

"That goes without saying."

"Think I'd make a woman a reasonably good husband?"

"I do," said I, truthfully. Whatever ailed the man?

"Good! And I," the doctor said, deliberately, "know that you'd make
any man more than a reasonably good wife. Should you like to be
mine, Sophronisba Two?"

The jump I gave threw Potty Black off my knees.

"You're ill, wandering in your wits, you poor man!" I was genuinely
alarmed. "Isn't there something I can do for you, doctor?"

"There is: you can marry me, if you want to," replied the doctor,
soberly. "Honestly, my dear girl, I'd be kind to you. I like and
admire and respect you more than I can tell you, Sophy."

"My dear friend," I said, when I caught my breath, "I like, admire,
and respect you, too. But people who marry each other need something
more than that. They--well, they need--love."

His shoulders twitched.

"This business of love is the devil's own invention!" he cried.
"It's safer and saner to like and respect people than to love them,
and lots harder.