“I—­cannot tell you—­I don’t know—­exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

She hardly recognized his voice; instinctively she began backing away.

“I don’t think I—­can explain.  You—­rather terrify me this morning.”

“Are you in love with ME?” he demanded in a terrible voice, beginning at the wrong end, as he would be sure to do.

Finger at her lip, her blue eyes, bright with unshed tears, resting upon his in a gaze as direct as a child’s, Sharlee nodded her head up and down.

And that was all the hint required by clever Mr. Surface, the famous social scientist.  He advanced somehow, and took her in his arms.  On the whole, it was rather surprising how satisfactorily he did it, considering that she was the first woman he had ever touched in all his days.

So they stood through a time that might have been a minute and might have been an age, since all of them that mattered had soared away to the sunlit spaces where no time is.  After awhile, driven by a strange fierce desire to see her face in the light of this new glory, he made a gentle effort to hold her off from him, but she clung to him, crying, “No, no!  I don’t want you to see me yet.”

After another interval of uncertain length, she said:—­

“All along my heart has cried out that you couldn’t have done that, and hurt me so. You couldn’t.  I will never doubt my heart again.  And you were so fine—­so fine—­to forgive me so easily.”

In the midst of his dizzying exaltation, he marveled at the ease with which she spoke her inmost feeling; he, the great apostle of reason and self-mastery, was much slower in recovering lost voice and control.  It was some time before he would trust himself to speak, and even then the voice that he used was not recognizable as his.

“So you are willing to do as much for my father’s son as to—­to—­take his name for your own.”

“No, this is something that I am doing for myself.  Your father was not perfect, but he was the only father that ever had a son whose name I would take for mine.”

A silence.

“We can keep my father’s house,” he said, in time, “for—­for—­us to live in.  You must give up the office.  And I will find light remunerative work, which will leave at least part of my time free for my book.”

She gave a little laugh that was half a sob.  “Perhaps—­you could persuade that wealthy old lady—­to get out a second edition of her thesaurus!”

“I wish I could, though!”

“You talk just like my little Doctor,” she gasped—­“my—­own little Doctor....  I’ve got a little surprise for you—­about remunerative work,” she went on, “only I can’t tell you now, because it’s a secret.  Promise that you won’t make me tell you.”

He promised.

Suddenly, without knowing why, she began to cry, her cheek against his breast.  “You’ve had a sad life, little Doctor—­a sad life.  But I am going to make it all up to you—­if you will show me the way.”