“By all means,” said Helen, as she prepared the tea. “I am sure it was an interesting one.”
“You may not know that I have a great love for the romantic,” confessed Professor Tesso. “It seems a far cry from my every-day life, but sometime I mean to prepare an essay upon the subject of the relation between science and romance. In fact, I believe them to be very closely allied.”
“What a clever idea!” cried Helen. “If you ever prove that to be true it will explain a lot of things.”
“Perhaps I can do it sometime,” continued the scientist, complacently, “and in the mean time I gratify my whim by taking observations whenever the opportunity offers. To-day I had a most charming illustration, and I became so much interested that it made me late in coming to you.”
“You certainly have an admirable excuse,” assented his hostess.
“I suspect that the objects of my observation are fellow-patriots of yours, but I am not certain. The man was a strong, fine-looking fellow with ability and determination written clearly in his face. He was evidently a deep student—perhaps a professor in some one of your American colleges. His companion, the heroine of my story, was a small woman, but so intense! I think it was her intensity which first attracted my attention.”
“I am sure they could not have been Americans, professor,” interrupted Helen. “No American woman would display her emotion like that, I am sure.—Do you take cream, and how many lumps of sugar, please?”
“You may be right, of course,” continued Tesso, giving her the necessary information. “In fact, my whole story is based upon supposition. However, as they sat there together, first he would say something to her, and they would look into each other’s faces, and then she would say something to him, and the operation would be repeated. They spoke little, but the silent communion of their hearts as they looked at each other spoke more eloquently than words. It was beautiful to behold. ‘There,’ I said to myself, ‘is a perfect union of well-mated souls. What a pity that they must ever go out into the world and run the risk of having something commonplace come between them and their devotion!’”
“Splendid!” cried Helen. “How I wish I might have been with you!”
“The whole episode could not have failed to interest you as it did me.” The professor was ingenuously sincere in his narrative. “In these days one so seldom sees husbands and wives properly matched up. Of course, it is quite possible that when this pair I speak of are actually married they will quarrel like cats and dogs. But for the present their devotion was so natural, so untainted by the world’s actualities, that I confess myself guilty of having deliberately watched them far beyond the bounds of common decency.”