"He pleads habit. He says he is wedded to the vintages of France and Spain. 'What?' I rally him, 'when those two nations are at war with us? And you call yourself a patriot?' He permits these railleries." "He is a man in a thousand!" "There is no man like him!" "If we exclude a certain resemblance--" "You refer to the Prince Regent? But I was thinking only of _moral_ grandeur." "True. All else, if one may say so without disloyalty, is but skin-deep." "Superficial." "Thank you, the expression is preferable, and I ask your leave to substitute it." "Solomon, my kinsman, is the noblest of men." "And you, Miss Marty, the best of women!" cried the Doctor, taking fire and a sip of the Fra Angelico together, and gulping the latter down heroically. "I drink to you; nay, if I dared, I would go even farther-- "No, no, I beg of you!" Her eyes, downcast before this sudden assault, let fall two happy tears, but a feeble gesture of the hand besought his mercy. "Let us talk of _him_," she went on breathlessly. "His elevation of character--" "If he were to marry, now?" the Doctor suggested. "Have you thought of that?" "Sometimes," she admitted, with a flutter of the breath, which sounded almost like a sigh. "It would serve to perpetuate--" "But where to find one worthy of him? She must be capable of rising to his level; rather, of continuing there." "You are sure that is necessary? Now, in my experience," the Doctor inclined his head to one side and rubbed his chin softly between thumb and forefinger--a favourite trick of his when diagnosing a case--"in my observation, rather, some disparity of temper, taste, character, may almost be postulated of a completely happy alliance; as in chemistry you bring together an acid and an alkali, and, always provided they don't explode--" "_He_ would never be satisfied with that. Believe me, the woman he condescends upon must, in return for that happy privilege, surrender her whole fate into his hands. Beneath his deference to our sex he carries an imperious will, and would demand no less." "There _is_ a little bit of that about him, now you mention it," assented the Doctor. "But let us not cheat--" Miss Marty checked herself suddenly. "Let us not vex ourselves with any such apprehensions. He will never marry, I am convinced. I cannot imagine him in the light of a parent--with offspring, for instance. Rather, when I see him in his regimentals, or, again, in his mayoral robe and chain--you have noticed how they become him?--" The Doctor admitted, with a faint sigh, that he had. "Well, then, he puts me in mind of that--what d'you call it, which the poets tell us is reproduced but once in several hundred years?" "The blossoming aloe?" suggested the Doctor. Miss Marty shook her head. "It's not a plant--it's a kind of bird. It begins with 'P, h,'--and you think of Dublin." "Let me see--Phelim? No, I have it! Phoenix."