Emily’s eyes danced, and Joan grew red and smiled foolishly. The meaning back of it was Professor Reed of Columbia. He had been calling on Joan of late frequently, and with significant regularity. He was short and sallow, with a narrow, student’s face, and brown eyes, that seemed large and dreamy through his glasses, as eyes behind glasses usually do. He was stiff in manner, because he had had little acquaintance with women. He was in love with Joan in a solemn, old-fashioned way. He was so shy and respectful that if Emily had not been most considerate of other people’s privacy, she would have teased Joan by asking her when she was going to propose to him that he propose to her.
He was rigid in his ideas of what constituted propriety for himself, but not in the least disposed to insist upon his standards in others. He felt that in wandering so near to Bohemia as Joan and Emily he was trenching upon the extreme of permissible self-indulgence. If he had been able to suspect Joan of “a past,” he would probably have been secretly delighted. He did not believe that she had, when he got beyond the surface of her life—the atmosphere of the playhouse and the newspaper office—and saw how matter-of-fact everything was. But he still clung to vague imaginings of unconventionality, so alluring to those who are conventional in thought and action.
Emily’s one objection to him was that he sometimes tried to be witty or humorous. Then he became hysterical and not far from silly. But as she knew him better she forgave this. Had she disliked him she would have been able to see nothing else.
“Do you admire strength in a man?” she once asked Joan.
“Yes—I suppose so. I like him to be—well, a man.”
“I like a man to be distinctly masculine—strong, mentally and physically. I don’t like him to domineer, but I like to feel that he would domineer me if he dared—and could domineer every one except me.”
“No, I don’t like that. I have my own ideas of what I wish to do. And I wish the man who is anything to me to be willing to help me to do them.”
“You want a man-servant, then?”
“No, indeed. But I don’t want a master.” Joan shut her lips together, and a stern, pained expression came into her face. Emily saw that her book of memory had flung open at an unpleasant page. “No,” she continued in a resolute tone, “I want no master. My centre of gravity must remain within myself.”
After that conversation Emily understood why Joan liked her intelligent, adoring, timid professor. “Joan will make him make her happy,” she said to herself, amused at, yet admiring, Joan’s practical, sensible planning.