In the little office, where the curtains were drawn and the green-shaded lamp already lit, I found Dr. Theophilus sitting over his evening mint julep, the solitary dissipation in which I had ever seen him indulge. His strong, ruddy face, with its hooked nose and illuminating smile, was still the face of a middle-aged man, though he had passed, a year ago, his seventieth birthday. At his feet, Waif, a stray dog, rescued in memory of Robin, the pointer, was curled up on a rug. "Well, my boy," he said cheerily, "you've had a good day, I hope?" "A good day, doctor, I've been in heaven," I answered. His smile shone out, clear and bright, as it did at a patient's bedside. "I've been there, too, Ben," he responded, "forty years ago." "Then why didn't you stay, sir?" "Because it isn't given to any man to stay longer than a few minutes. Ah, my boy, you are the mixture of a fighter and a dreamer." "But suppose," I blushed, for I was a reserved man, though few people were reserved with Dr. Theophilus, "suppose that your heaven is a woman?" "Has it ever been anything else to a man since Adam?" he asked. "Every man's heaven, and most men's hell, is a woman, my boy. Why, look at old George Bolingbroke now! He's no longer young, and he's certainly no longer handsome, yet I've seen him, in his day, stand up straight and tall in church at Miss Matoaca Bland's side, and look perfectly happy because he could sing from the same hymn-book. Then a week later, when she'd thrown him over, I saw him jump up at a supper, and drink champagne out of the slipper of some variety actress." "Yet she was right, I suppose, to throw him over?" "Oh, she was right, I'm not questioning that she was right," he responded hastily; "but it isn't always the woman who is right, Ben," he added, "that makes a man's heaven." "The poor little lady had no slipperful of champagne to fall back on," I suggested. "It's a pity she hadn't--for it's as true as the Gospel, that George Bolingbroke drove her into all this nonsense about the equality of sexes. Equality, indeed! A man doesn't want to make love to an equal, but to an angel! Bless my soul, I don't know to save my life, what to think of Miss Matoaca, except that she's crazy. That's the kindest thing I can say for her. She's gone now and got into correspondence with some bloodthirsty, fire-eating woman's rights advocates up North, and she's actually taken to distributing their indecent pamphlets. She had the face to leave one on my desk this morning. I'd just taken it in the tongs before you came in and put it into the fire. There are the ashes of it," he added sardonically, waving his silver goblet in the direction of some grey shreds of paper in the fireplace. "All the same, doctor, she may be crazy, but I respect her."