reserve.

"I will bring Isaacson," he said, quietly. "I want him to know you
really. Why are you smiling?"

"But--I am not smiling!"

Nor was she; and, seeing her quiet gravity and wonder, he was surprised
that he had imagined it.

"I must tell you," she said, "that though I took such a fancy to Doctor
Isaacson, I don't think he is like you; I don't think he is a
psychologist."

"You think me a psychologist?" said Nigel, in very honest surprise.

"Yes, and I'll tell you why, if you'll promise not to be offended."

"Please--please do."

"I think one reads character as much with the eyes of the heart as with
the eyes of the brain. You use two pairs of eyes in your reading. But I
am not sure that Doctor Isaacson does."

"Why did you ask me not to be offended? You meant to put it differently.
And you would have been right. Isaacson is a brilliant man, and I am
not. But he has as much heart as I, although he has so much more brain
than I. And the stronger each is, the better for a man."

"But the brain--oh, it has such a tendency to overshadow, to browbeat
the heart. In its strength it so often grows arrogant. The _juste
milieu_--I think you have it. Be content, and never let your brain cry
out for more, lest your heart should have to put up with less."

"You think too well of me," he said; "much too well."

She leaned forward over the tea-table and looked at him closely, with
the peculiar scrutiny of one so strongly concentrated upon the matter in
hand as to be absolutely unself-conscious.

"I wonder if I do," she said; and he felt as if she were trying to drag
the very heart out of him and to see how it was beating. "I wonder if I
do."

She relaxed her muscles, which had been tense, and leaned back, letting
her right hand, which for a moment had grasped the edge of the table,
drop down on to her lap.

"It may be so. I do think well of you. That is certain. And I'm afraid I
think very often badly of men. And yet I do try to judge fairly, and not
only to put on the black cap because of my own unfortunate experiences.
There are such splendid men--but there are such utter brutes. You must
know that. And yet I doubt if a man ever knows how good, or how bad,
another man can be. Perhaps one must be a woman thoroughly to know a
man--man, the beast and the angel."

"I dare say that is true."

He spoke almost with conviction. For all the time he had been with her
he had been companioned by a strange, unusual f