That night one of the Gatchell boys took Alicia to a dance.  She was in blue and white, like an angel, and the Gatchell boy trod on air.  But to me came Doctor Richard Geddes, and threw himself into a wing-chair.

“Sophronisba Two,” he asked, we being alone in the library, “what have I done to offend Alicia?”

“Is Alicia offended?”

“Isn’t she?” wondered the doctor.  “She won’t let me get near enough to find out,” he added gloomily.  “And it isn’t just.  She ought to know that—­well, that I’d rather cut off my right hand than give her real cause for offense.  I’m going to ask you a straight, man question; is that girl a—­a flirt?  She is not a—­jilt?”

“Heaven forbid!”

“Does she care for anybody else?”

“On my honor, I don’t know.”

“It couldn’t be any of these whipper-snappers of boys:  she’s not that sort,” worried the doctor.  “Sophy, is it—­Jelnik?”

My heart stood still.  I could make no reply.

“I don’t know.  My dear friend, I don’t know!”

“It would be the most natural thing in the world,” he reflected.  “Jelnik looks like Prince Charming himself.  And, for all his surface indolence, there’s genius in the man.  Why shouldn’t she be taken with him?”

We looked at each other.

“I see,” said the doctor, quietly.  “Now, little friend, what concerns you and me is our dear girl’s happiness.  Does Jelnik care, do you think?”

“I don’t know!” I said again.  I felt like one on the rack.  It seemed to me I could hear my heart-strings stretching and snapping.  “But what is one girl’s affection to a man born to be loved by women?”

“He is indifferent to women, for the most part,” the doctor said thoughtfully.  “He is so free from vanity, and at the same time so reserved, that one has difficulty in getting at his real feelings.”

“She, also, is free from petty vanity,” I told him.  “She has an innocent, happy pleasure in her own youth and prettiness, but hers is the unspoiled heart of a child.”

“Who should know it better than I, that am a great hulking, bad-tempered fellow twice her age!” groaned the doctor.  “Yet, Sophy, I could make her happier than Jelnik could.  Dear and lovely as she is, she couldn’t make him happy, either—­Don’t you think I’m a fool, Sophy?”

“No,” said I, smiling wanly; “I don’t.”

“This business of being in love is a damnable arrangement.  Here was I,” he grumbled, “busy, reasonably happy, with a sound mind in a sound body, and a digestion that was a credit to me.  And along comes a girl, and everything’s changed!  My work doesn’t fill my days, my food is bitter in my mouth, and I wake up in the night saying to myself, ‘You fool, you’re chasing rainbows!’ Sophy, don’t you ever fall in love with somebody you know you can’t have!  It’s hell!”

I didn’t tell him I knew it.

One of his men came to tell him he was needed urgently.  As it meant a thirty-mile trip and the night was cold, I made him wait for a cup of coffee and an omelet.”