“She is grateful to me for having saved her life, and gratitude is a sentiment utterly at war with love. Moreover, Evelyn is perfectly frank and unreserved in her conversations with me. No woman is ever so with the man she loves, until after he has made her his wife. So I regard Evelyn, as for the present, safe. She is not in love with me, and I shall do nothing to induce such sentiment on her part.” Again Dorothy sat silent. “But there is much that I can do for her, and I want to do it. You must help me. And above all you must tell me the moment you discover in her any shadow or trace of that reserve toward me which might mean or suggest a dawning of love. I shall be constantly on the lookout for such signs, but you, with your woman’s wit and intuitions, may be quicker than I to see.” “Precisely what do you mean, Kilgariff?” Dorothy asked, in her frank way of going directly to the marrow of every matter with which she had occasion to deal. “You say you are in love with Evelyn. Do you not wish her to be in love with you?” “No! By every consideration of propriety, by every sentiment of honour, no!” he answered, with more of vehemence than he was accustomed to put into his words. “Do you not understand? I can never ask her to marry me; I am therefore in honour bound not to win her love. I shall devote myself most earnestly to the task of repairing such defects in her education as I discover. But the moment I see or suspect the least disposition on her part to think of me otherwise than with the indifference of mere friendship, I shall take myself out of her life completely. I ask you to aid me in watching for such indications of dawning affection, and in forestalling them.” “You shall have all the assistance you need to discover and do your real duty,” said Dorothy. But that most womanly of women did not at all share Kilgariff’s interpretation either of his own duty or of Evelyn’s sentiment toward him. She knew from her own experience that a woman grows shy and reserved with a man the moment she understands herself to be in love with him. But equally she knew that love may long conceal itself even from the one who cherishes it, and that reserve, when it comes, comes altogether too late for purposes of safeguarding. But Dorothy did not care. She wanted these two to love each other, and she saw no reason why they should not. She recognised their peculiar fitness for each other’s love, and as for the rest—wise woman that she was—she trusted love to overcome all difficulties. In other words, Dorothy was a woman, and she herself had loved and mated as God meant that women should. So she was disposed to let well alone in this case. Kilgariff’s wound was healing satisfactorily now, and little by little his strength was coming back to him. So, every day, he sat in the laboratory with Dorothy and Evelyn, helping in the work by advice and suggestion, and often in more direct and active ways. For Arthur Brent had written to Dorothy:—