“That, I fancy, is a question of temperament,” said Maria Dolores.  “Your friend has the ascetic temperament.  And it does not by any means follow that he loves less because he resigns his love.  What you call an inhuman story seems to me a wonderfully noble one.  I saw your friend this morning, when he and you were walking together, and I said to myself, ’That man looks as if he had listened to the Counsels of Perfection.  His vocation shines through him.’  I think you should reconcile yourself to his accepting it.”

“Well,” said John, on the tone of a man ready to change the subject, “I owe him at least one good mark.  His account of his ‘heart-state’ led me to examine my own, and I discovered that I am in love myself,—­which is a useful thing to know.”

“Oh?” said Maria Dolores, with a little effect of reserve.

“Yes,” said John, nothing daunted, “though unlike his, mine is an unreciprocated flame, and unavowed.”

“Ah?” said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an undertone of sympathy.

“Yes,” said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady mixture of fearfulness and joy.  “The woman I love doesn’t dream I love her, and dreams still less of loving me,—­for which blessed circumstance may Heaven make me truly thankful.”

The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful eyes.  They shone into John’s; his drank their light; and something violent happened in his bosom.

“Oh—?” she said.

“Yes,” said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as they lay loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would be, and fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with fire, how perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem to her, and how nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing the play.  “Yes,” he said, “it’s a circumstance to be thankful for, because, like Winthorpe himself, though for different reasons, I’m unable to contemplate marriage.”  His voice sank sorrowfully, and he made a sorrowful movement.

“Oh—?” said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more explicit.

“Winthorpe’s too beastly puritanical—­and I’m too beastly poor,” said he.

“Oh,” she murmured.  Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to compassion.

“She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist in two hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about myself,” thought John; “but surely it would need six hemispheres to produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers.”—­“Yes,” he said, “I should be ‘looking up’ if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me.”

Maria Dolores’ beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as compassionate.

“But men who are poor work and earn money,” she said, on the tone that young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men.  And when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may be looked upon as rolling.