"Only for a month or so, and but slightly. We have not met half a dozen times. It was only tonight, you see, that I began to know her well. We talked together, and I got a glimpse of her real self—of her slender little body, of her earthly tenement, of course, I had an idea before. She is a lissom thing, with eyes like wells, and with a way to her which conveys the idea of wisdom without wickedness, and which makes a man wish he were not what he is, and were more fitted to associate with her."
"That's one good effect, anyhow. I don't know of any man who more needed to meet such a woman. How long do you expect this influence to last?"
"Longer than one of your good resolutions, my son; as long as she will have anything to do with me."
"Does this brown streak of a saint live in the city? Is her shrine easy of access? What are you going to do about it?"
"She's not a saint; she's a piquant, cultivated woman; but she is different, somehow, from any other I've ever met."
"You've met a good many, my boy."
His face fell a little.
"Yes," he said, "and I almost wish it were different; but the past is not all there is of being. There's a heap of comfort in that."
"Cupid has thumped you with his bird-bolt, certainly. Why, man, you don't mean to say that you're in earnest—that you are really stricken; that this promises to be something unlike all other heart or head troubles with you?"
He laughed.