“They say there is safety in a multitude,” said Marion, slyly. “No danger of falling in love when there are plenty of them. It’s the monopoly of one that proves fatal, they tell me.”
“So you think falling in love a fatality, do you?” asked the young man, quickly. “Well, if that is the case, I confess that I’m a fatalist.”
“It has fatal consequences, I have discovered,” said Marion, half sadly, “although I must admit that I speak from observation and not experience.”
“A confession that I am glad to hear you make, Miss Marlowe,” said her caller almost seriously; “for most of the women that men meet nowadays are either just recovering from some heart malady or at the actual crisis of the disease, or else, what is worse, they have so thoroughly recovered from some violent attack as to render them immune from ever having another.”
“Poor things! I pity them,” said Marion, laughing, “but I can fancy that none of the three classes would afford very desirable companions. Still, we are all liable to infection of that kind,” she added, as she offered him a chair, “and up to the present time no one has produced a preventive.”
“No, nor an antidote,” was the answer, in the same serious voice, “but now tell me, Miss Marlowe, about your plans for the future.”
He spoke with so much sympathetic interest that Marion did not dream of resenting it; rather, it seemed most natural for her to sit there and tell him all about her plans.
He was to be a physician and she a nurse. They had many hopes and aspirations in common.
The evening passed so quickly that Marion was astonished when at ten o’clock the young man rose to leave her.
“I shall arrange to come over to Charity often,” he said at parting. “I know several of the doctors there, so I can do so easily.”