"Well, I never have meant there should be. I have been perfectly honorable and above-board with Jim; treated him just like a sister, and I thought there was the most perfect understanding between us."
"Well, you see, darling," said Eva, "I've sometimes thought whether it was quite fair to let any one be so very intimate with one, unless one were willing to take the consequences, in case his feelings should become deeply involved. Now, we should have thought it a bad thing for Mr. St. John to go on cultivating an intimate friendship with Angie, if he never meant to marry. It would be taking from her feelings and affections that might be given to some one who would make her happy for life; and I think some women, I don't mean you, of course, but some women I have seen and heard of, like to absorb all the feeling and devotion a man has without in the least intending to marry him. They keep him from being interested in any one else who might make him a happy home, and won't have him themselves."
"Eva, you are too hard," said Alice.
"Understand me, dear; I said I didn't mean you, for I think your course has been perfectly honorable and honest so far; but I do think you have got to a place that needs care. It's my positive belief that Jim not only loves you, Alice, but that he is in love with you in a way that will have the most serious effect on his life and character."
"Oh, dear me, that's just what I've been fearing," said Alice, "isn't it too bad? I really don't think it's my fault. Do you know, Eva, I came here meaning to go home to-night, and I stayed only because I was afraid to walk home with Jim. I was sure if I did there would be a crisis of some kind."
"For my part, Ally," said Eva, "I'm not so very sure that there hasn't been some advance in your feelings, as well as in Jim's. I don't see why you should set it down among the impossibles that you should marry Jim Fellows."
"Oh! well," said Alice, "I like—yes, I really love Jim very much; he is very agreeable to me, always. I know nobody, on the whole, more so; but then, Eva, he's not at all the sort of man I have ever thought of as possible for me to marry. Oh! not at all," and Alice gazed before her into the coals, as if she saw her hero through them.
"And what sort of a man is this phenix?"
"Oh! something grave, and deep, and high, and heroic."
Eva gave a light, little shrug to her shoulders, and rippled a laugh. "And when you have got such a man, you will have to ask him to go to market for beef and cranberry sauce. You will have to get him to match your worsted, and carry your parcels, and talk over with him about how to cure the chimney of smoking and make the kitchen range draw. Don't you think a hero will be a rather cumbersome help in housekeeping? Besides, your heroes like to sit on pedestals and have you worship them. Now, for my part, I'd rather have a good kind man that will worship me.