on a
belief in her fidelity?'

'Yes; I should not go if it were not for her.'

'Well, Stephen, you have put me in rather an awkward position. If I give
my true sentiments, I shall hurt your feelings; if I don't, I shall hurt
my own judgment. And remember, I don't know much about women.'

'But you have had attachments, although you tell me very little about
them.'

'And I only hope you'll continue to prosper till I tell you more.'

Stephen winced at this rap. 'I have never formed a deep attachment,'
continued Knight. 'I never have found a woman worth it. Nor have I been
once engaged to be married.'

'You write as if you had been engaged a hundred times, if I may be
allowed to say so,' said Stephen in an injured tone.

'Yes, that may be. But, my dear Stephen, it is only those who half know
a thing that write about it. Those who know it thoroughly don't take
the trouble. All I know about women, or men either, is a mass of
generalities. I plod along, and occasionally lift my eyes and skim the
weltering surface of mankind lying between me and the horizon, as a crow
might; no more.'

Knight stopped as if he had fallen into a train of thought, and Stephen
looked with affectionate awe at a master whose mind, he believed, could
swallow up at one meal all that his own head contained.

There was affective sympathy, but no great intellectual fellowship,
between Knight and Stephen Smith. Knight had seen his young friend when
the latter was a cherry-cheeked happy boy, had been interested in him,
had kept his eye upon him, and generously helped the lad to books, till
the mere connection of patronage grew to acquaintance, and that ripened
to friendship. And so, though Smith was not at all the man Knight would
have deliberately chosen as a friend--or even for one of a group of a
dozen friends--he somehow was his friend. Circumstance, as usual, did
it all. How many of us can say of our most intimate alter ego, leaving
alone friends of the outer circle, that he is the man we should have
chosen, as embodying the net result after adding up all the points in
human nature that we love, and principles we hold, and subtracting all
that we hate? The man is really somebody we got to know by mere physical
juxtaposition long maintained, and was taken into our confidence, and
even heart, as a makeshift.

'And what do you think of her?' Stephen ventured to say, after a
silence.

'Taking her merits on trust from you,' said Knight, 'as we