Dr Dudley was not in love with Mona. It was his own firm conviction that he never would be really in love at all. All women attracted him who in any respect or in any degree approached his ideal; the devoted wife and mother, the artist, the beautiful dancer, the severe student, the capable housewife, the eloquent platform speaker,--in all of these he saw different manifestations of the eternal idea of womanhood, and he never thought of demanding that one woman should in herself combine the characteristics of all. He was content to take each one for what she was, and to enjoy her in that capacity. He keenly appreciated the society of women; but the moment he was out of their presence--sometimes even before he was out of it--he found himself analysing them as calmly as if they were men. Yet "analyse" is scarcely the right word to use, for Dr Dudley read character less by deliberate study than by a curious power of intuition, which few would have predicated from a general knowledge of his mind and character. Mona would have been surprised at that time had she known how much truer was his estimate of her than was that of the Sahib. Almost at the first glance, he had understood something of both her simplicity and her complexity, her reserve and her unconventionally; almost at the first interview, he had realised that, whatever might be the case in the future, at present the idea of sex simply did not exist for her. She might well call him _simpatico_. He was appreciative almost to the point of genius. Certainly no woman had ever attracted him precisely as Mona did. She attracted him so much that he had been fain to hold his peace about her, and to wish that she were not "Miss Simpson's niece." And yet there was a pathos and a piquancy about her, in her dingy surroundings, which were not without their charm, and which appealed to a latent sense of the fatherly in him, the very existence of which he had scarcely suspected, for Dr Dudley was essentially a college man. "Surely, surely," he thought as he enjoyed his after-dinner cigar in his tiny smoking-room, "she would never look at that fellow. She could not be such a fool. If she had lived fifty years ago it would have been all _en règle_, She would have married him as a matter of course, and an excellent match for her too. She would in due course have 'suckled fools and chronicled small-beer,' and at the present moment her granddaughters would be holding entrance scholarships for Newnham or Girton. "But it's not too late for her yet. If only that dear old aunt of mine were not such a confounded Conservative, I would get her to pay for Miss Maclean's education. By Jove! it would be education in her case, and not mere instruction, as it is with most of the learned women one meets; but even if my old lady had the money to spare, she would infinitely rather give Miss Maclean her linen and her best bedroom furniture, and bestow her with a blessing on the draper!"