"My dear Marjory, no history is ever written up to date. Even in your beloved school-primers the last years of Her Gracious Majesty's reign are glozed over by generalities. You see it is never safe to hazard an opinion till events have proved it to be right. And then decent reserve over the immediate past saves a lot of worry. I should hate to confess that I had told a lie yesterday, though I might own up placidly to one seven years ago. Yes! seven years should be close time for confession. A man renews his vile body in that period, and can take credit for having changed his morals also." "But it is more than seven years since you were thirty-two." "You have a head for arithmetic, my dear, not for--the other thing; and it is possible that I am still only in the second volume of my fiction." "You mean in love. What a delightfully funny idea!" "Mrs. Cameron!" cried the doctor, "do you see anything comic in the spectacle of Methuselah wishing to get married; for I don't. I think it is melancholy in the extreme." In truth he did think so, for though, when he was away, his own sentimentality seemed sufficient for them both, the first look at Marjory's face always told him that, if the received theories were true, there was something yet to come before he had any right--in a way any desire--to ask Marjory to be his wife. If they were true! There lay the problem which he found so much difficulty in solving. Like most men of his profession, he was almost over familiar with the material side of the question, and, being naturally of delicate fibre, an instinctive revolt made him exaggerate the part which romance was to play in the purification of passion. To marry when you loved each other was one thing; for one to love, and both to remain friends, was another! And between these two ideals he hesitated; for Dr. Kennedy's power lay not so much in strength as in a certain fineness of perception and delicacy of touch. And yet at times a doubt lingered--the doubt which had made him fall foul of the things he had been taught in his youth. But even through this there ran a vein of protest against the lack of colour which a more prosaic, more material, and yet less animal view of the relations which ought to exist between a man and woman would involve. For he was sentimental to a degree, and told himself that the very fact of his age made it more than ever necessary that his wife should be inspired to do her duty by something more than mere affection. That is to say, once more, if current theories were true! He came back to this point again and again, unable to settle it to his own satisfaction, and finding his chief comfort in the fact that Marjory had, hitherto, never shown the least sign of loving anyone. If that were to continue in the future, he could imagine the doubts and difficulties disappearing altogether; but for this time was required, time for her to understand her own nature. His knowledge, his experience of life, the position in which