"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. Now, what do you say to marrying me?" "I say you had no such notion in your head the last time you and I talked together. When did it seize you?" I demanded, suspiciously. "I began to think about it seriously--er--ah--some days ago," he said, reddening. "What day, to be exact?" "Well," said he, resentfully, "it occurred to me last Wednesday, if you want to be so all-fired sure!" "What happened last Wednesday to make you think of asking me to marry you?" The doctor looked at me very much as a little boy looks at a grown-up who is holding a soapy wash-cloth in one hand and an ear in the other. "What do you want to know for?" "Because. I just want to know because. Well?" He squirmed, and was silent. "Was it because you have ceased to care for Alicia, already?" His glare answered that question. "No? Why, then, didn't you ask Alicia, instead of coming to me for second choice? Look here, Doctor Richard Geddes: if I was not firmly and truly your friend, I should be furious, do you understand? Or," I added, darkly, "I might even revenge myself by taking you at your word!" "Sophronisba Two!" The doctor looked at, me piteously. "Why didn't you ask Alicia?" I persisted, inexorably. "I did!" gulped the doctor. "But she said she couldn't. She said, why didn't I care for you instead of her? You were so much better--and--and I'd be happier with you, for I'd have the most unselfish angel--" he stopped miserably. "Well?" "Well, I kept turning it over in my mind; and the more I thought of it, the clearer I perceived that with a wife like you I'd be a better and a more worth-while man. I--I think so much of you, Sophy, that I'm telling you the whole truth," he finished. "That's why I'm going to keep on being friends with you--better friends than ever," I told him. "You're going to marry me, then, Sophy?" "Didn't you just hear me tell you I meant to keep on being friends with you?" "You won't, then?" "I won't, then." "Yet there are good reasons why you might reconsider your decision," he said, after a pause. "We are so diametrically opposed it would seem inevitable we should marry each other. Why, Sophy, we've got enough to quarrel happily about for the rest of our lives. For instance, do you sleep with all your windows open?" "I close two, and leave two open."