the most interesting problems about human nature!"

So then she was puzzled again and laid aside the book half read, before
she got even to the chapter that was really censured and commonly read
first.

Not that way, she saw, lay illumination.

At last she tried another road. "You know," she said reflectively one
night, during those long hearthside chats that neither really would
have changed for any other social form, "I like all the people here and
so on, but they're terribly busy, aren't they, and I always feel I've
sort of come too late."

"How sort of?" he replied indulgently.

"Well, I've got no real friends and you're busy so much with your dull
old work. Don't you know anybody?--really know, I mean--old friends,
who aren't too far away?"

Hubert thought for a few moments. "It sounds absurd," he said at last,
"but I was such a hermit till I met you that I don't believe I've got a
single woman friend."

Helena, he noticed, was not flattered in the least degree. That sort
of thing was what made her so splendid. He told himself that a woman
who was womanly would be a bore about the house, and smiled adoringly
on his own child-like specimen, who waited silently, as though quite
sure that he would find a friend in the same way that after some time
he had found her brooch. But there was a long pause and he made no
suggestions.

"Well, what about men then?" she added simply. "I don't mind."

And he was once again enchanted by her naivete.

"You shall have the pick of all my man-friends," he said, and then
puzzled her by laughing.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Oh, you're so perfect, dearest!" he said, and got up and kissed her.

It needed some thought, none the less. Of his old pals--he suddenly
remembered that he had been married over a year now, and not seen any
one of them or wanted to--there were not many who lived near, and some
of these ... well, they were all right in their way, but vaguely he
felt they were not quite fit to introduce to any one so sweet as his
girl-wife.... Marriage frequently turns cynics into sentimentalists.
(The converse can be well ignored.)

"I know," he cried suddenly.

"I felt sure you would," she said. It was just these remarks that made
her such an excellent companion. "Who is it then?"

"Old Boyd--old Kenneth Boyd. He's just the very man you'd like. One
feels so awfully at home with him, he's restful you know;
old-friend-in-five-minutes sort of fellow.