She came to his side again:  in silence slipped her hand into his; and following both his look and his thought, she felt her own eyes smart with a sudden bright dimness.

“This is the best city in the world,” said Henry Surface.  “The kindest people—­the kindest people—­”

“Yes, little Doctor.”

He turned abruptly and caught her to him again; and now, hearing even above the hammering of his own blood the wild fluttering of her heart against his, his tongue unlocked and he began to speak his heart.  It was not speech as he had always known speech.  In all his wonderful array of terminology there were no words fitted to this undreamed need; he had to discover them somehow, by main strength make them up for himself; and they came out stammering, hard-wrung, bearing new upon their rough faces the mint-mark of his own heart.  Perhaps she did not prize them any the less on that account.

“I’m glad that you love me that way—­Henry.  I must call you Henry now—­mustn’t I, Henry?”

“Do you know,” she said, after a time, “I am—­almost weakening about giving our money for a Home.  Somehow, I’d so like for you to have it, so that—­”

She felt a little shiver run through him.

“No, no!  I could not bear to touch it.  We shall be far happier—­”

“You could stop work, buy yourself comforts, pleasures, trips.  It is a mad thing,” she teased, “to give away money....  Oh, little Doctor—­I can’t breathe if you hold me—­so tight.”

“About the name,” he said presently, “I—­dislike to oppose you, but I cannot—­I cannot—­”

“Well, I’ve decided to change it, Henry, in deference to your wishes.”

“I am extremely glad.  I myself know a name—­”

“Instead of calling it the Henry G. Surface Home—­”

Suddenly she drew away from him, leaving behind both her hands for a keepsake, and raised to him a look so luminous and radiant that he felt himself awed before it, like one who with impious feet has blundered upon holy ground.

“I am going to call it the Henry G. Surface Junior Home.  Do you know any name for a Home so pretty as that?”

“No, no, I—­can’t let you—­”

But she cried him down passionately, saying:  “Yes, that is our name now, and we are going to make it honorable.”

From his place beside the sociological bookcase—­perhaps faunal naturalists can tell us why—­the great pleasure-dog Behemoth, whose presence they had both forgotten, raised his leonine head and gave a sharp, joyous bark.