“Riddle me your riddle,” she commanded. “What is every man in love with once in his life?”
“An ideal.”
“Ah! And your ideal—where do you keep it safe from the common gaze?”
“I tether it to my heart—with a single hair,” said the man below.
“Oh,” commented Miss Brewster, in a changed tone. And, again, “Oh,” just a little blankly. “I wish I hadn’t asked that,” she confessed silently to herself, after a moment.
Still, the spirit of reckless experimentalism pressed her onward.
“That’s a peril to the scientific mind, you know,” she warned. “Suppose your ideal should come true?”
“It won’t,” said he comfortably.
Miss Brewster’s regrets sensibly mitigated.
“In that case, of course, your career is safe from accident,” she remarked.