As for Miss Lady herself, she was finding the Doctor's interest and companionship a welcome solace in her loneliness. The well of his knowledge seemed to her fathomless, and she never tired of hanging over the brink and looking down, often seeing stars in the darkness that she never saw in the day.
When this last lesson was finished, the Doctor closed the book reluctantly:
“I have given you the merest outline for future work,” he said. “The rest remains with you. Have you decided yet what you are going to do?”
“No, I'll do whatever you tell me, Doctor. Only I do hope it won't be to teach school,—the very thought of teaching makes me shrivel.”
“It is not altogether beyond the range of possibility that you will marry,” said the Doctor, tracing parallelograms on the arm of the chair. “Such things do happen, you know.”
Miss Lady, sitting with her elbows on the table and her chin on her palms, flashed a strange, questioning glance at him.
“Do you believe in love, Doctor?”
“Why, of course, you foolish girl, in all its manifestations, filial, paternal, marital. Assuredly I do.”
“But I mean that other kind, the kind that makes a little heaven for a man and woman here on earth, that answers all their longings, so that nothing else matters, just so they have each other. I read about it in novels and in poetry, but I don't see it. The married people I know take each other as much for granted as they do their hands and feet. That's not what love means to me.”
The Doctor smiled indulgently. “Wait until you have passed the sentimental age before you give your verdict! Most young ladies imagine that because love does not arrive, full panoplied on a snow-white steed, that it is not love. You, probably, like the rest, have read too many romantic novels. When you come to know life better you will realize that moral equality and intellectual affinity promise a much safer union than a violent romantic attachment.”