ur talks
together have meant much more to me than I can tell. I shall never
forget this summer. Your friendship has been a wonderful influence in my
life."

The little man moved uneasily and glanced timidly around. "I am truly
glad to know that our companionship has not been altogether distasteful
to you; I felt sure that it was not, but I--ahem!--I am glad to hear
your confirmation of my opinion. It--ah--it enables me to say that which
for several weeks past has been weighing heavily on my mind."

Kitty looked at him with the manner of a trusting disciple waiting for
the gems of truth that were about to fall from the lips of a venerable
teacher.

"Miss Reid--ah--why need our beautiful and mutually profitable
companionship cease?"

"I fear that I do not understand, Professor Parkhill," she answered,
puzzled by his question.

He looked at her with just a shade of mild--very mild--rebuke, as he
returned, "Why, I think that I have stated my thought clearly. I mean
that I am very desirous that our relation--the relation which we both
have found so helpful--should continue. I am sure that we have, in these
months which we have spent together, sufficient evidence that our souls
vibrate in perfect harmony. I need you, dear friend; your understanding
of my soul's desires is so sympathetic; I feel that you so complement
and fill out, as it were, my spiritual self. I need you to encourage, to
inspire, to assist me in the noble work to which I am devoting all my
strength."

She looked at him, now, with an expression of amazement. "Do you mean--"
she faltered in confusion while the red blood colored her cheeks.

"Yes," he answered, confidently. "I am asking you to be my wife. Not,
however," he added hastily, "in the common, vulgar understanding of that
relation. I am offering you, dear friend, that which is vastly higher
than the union of the merely animal, which is based wholly upon the
purely physical and material attraction. I am proposing marriage of our
souls--a union, if you please, of our higher intellectual and spiritual
selves. I feel, indeed, that by those higher laws which the vulgar,
beastlike minds are incapable of recognizing, we are already one. I
sense, as it were, that oneness which can exist only when two souls are
mated by the great over-soul; I feel that you are already mine--that, I
am--that we are already united in a spiritual union that is--"

The young woman checked him with a gesture, which, had h