many a
year yet. I'm as well as can be, except for the mind ache." Here she
gave a nervous little laugh. The Professor looked down at her, sitting
there on the stool, her head drooping to the side as he remembered to
have seen it years ago when she was a little chidden child. The waving
hair hid her face from his sight,--all but the delicate oval of the
cheek and the curve of the full, rounded chin.

"Winifred," he said gently, "I think you have something to tell me."

"Yes, I have, only I don't know how to begin."

"Is it, perhaps, about Mr. Flint?"

"Yes, about Mr. Flint," Winifred admitted.

"He has been asking you to marry him?"

"Yes, asking me to marry him," Winifred repeated, still like a child
reciting her catechism.

"And you promised."

"No, I did not," Winifred answered with sudden energy; "I told him I
never could, would, or should marry him,--that I would go on being
friends with him as long as he liked, but on condition that he gave up
the other idea entirely."

Professor Anstice reached out his thin white scholarly fingers and
stroked the rebellious waves of his daughter's hair.

"Winifred," he said, "you are always acting on impulse. You never take
time to consider anything, but jump and plunge like a broncho. Now let
us talk this matter over calmly: I am afraid you have made a
mistake--a serious mistake, my dear, though it may not be too late to
remedy it."

"There is nothing to remedy," said Winifred, with a tremulous attempt
at cheerfulness; "he asked me and I said 'No,' and he said he should
never ask me again, and I said I hoped he wouldn't, or something like
that, and so the matter ended; and I am always going to live with you
and be good to you,--and you won't be sorry for that, will you?"

"I should be very sorry if it came about so. Listen, Winifred. Because
you see me a delver in dusty old books, you think perhaps that I don't
know what love is; but I tell you as I grow older it comes to fill a
larger and larger part of the horizon, to seem perhaps the only
reality. I don't mean just the love of a man for a woman, but the
great throbbing bond of human affection and sympathy; and of all the
kinds of affection, there is none that has the strength and toughness
that belong to the love of husband and wife. I wish you to marry,
Winifred,--I have always wished it,--only let it be to a true man, my
dear,--let it be to a true man!"

"Father, he _is_ a true man," said Winifred, speaking