“And her form has all the grace of a gazelle. She is a dream of enchantment. Every movement is a poem. I could worship her! I could spend my life at the feet of such a woman listening to the musical murmur of her heavenly voice.”
“Look here, professor,” said Dick, “what is the matter with you?”
“I’m enthralled, enchanted, enraptured by that woman.”
“What woman?”
“Why, the one we are talking about, Sarah Ann Ketchum, president of the Foreign Humanitarian Society, of Boston, Massachusetts. Who else could I be talking about?”
“Oh, murder!” exploded Brad. “Wouldn’t that freeze you some!”
Both boys laughed heartily, much to the displeasure of the professor.
“Such uncalled-for mirth is unseemly,” he declared. “I don’t like it. It offends me very much. Besides, she may see you laughing, and that would harrow her sensitive soul.”
“Professor, I didn’t think it of you!” said Dick, trying to check his merriment. “You are smashed on the lady from Boston—and you’re married. Have you forgotten that?”
“Alas, no! I can never forget it! But do not use such vulgar and offensive language. ‘Smashed!’ Shocking! You do not understand me. She is my ideal, my affinity, the soul of my soul! Yet I must worship her from afar; for, as you say, I am a married man. I have talked with her; I have heard the music of her voice; I have listened to the pearls of wisdom which dropped from her sweet lips. But I haven’t told her I am married. It wasn’t necessary. Even if I were to know her better, even if I were to become her friend, being a man of honor, that friendship would be purely platonic.”