"Why didn't you ask Alicia?" I persisted, inexorably.
"I did!" gulped the doctor. "But she said she couldn't. She said, why didn't I care for you instead of her? You were so much better—and—and I'd be happier with you, for I'd have the most unselfish angel—" he stopped miserably.
"Well?"
"Well, I kept turning it over in my mind; and the more I thought of it, the clearer I perceived that with a wife like you I'd be a better and a more worth-while man. I—I think so much of you, Sophy, that I'm telling you the whole truth," he finished.
"That's why I'm going to keep on being friends with you—better friends than ever," I told him.
"You're going to marry me, then, Sophy?"
"Didn't you just hear me tell you I meant to keep on being friends with you?"
"You won't, then?"
"I won't, then."
"Yet there are good reasons why you might reconsider your decision," he said, after a pause. "We are so diametrically opposed it would seem inevitable we should marry each other. Why, Sophy, we've got enough to quarrel happily about for the rest of our lives. For instance, do you sleep with all your windows open?"