efer to the Prince Regent? But I was thinking only of _moral_
grandeur."

"True. All else, if one may say so without disloyalty, is but
skin-deep."

"Superficial."

"Thank you, the expression is preferable, and I ask your leave to
substitute it."

"Solomon, my kinsman, is the noblest of men."

"And you, Miss Marty, the best of women!" cried the Doctor, taking
fire and a sip of the Fra Angelico together, and gulping the latter
down heroically. "I drink to you; nay, if I dared, I would go even
farther--

"No, no, I beg of you!" Her eyes, downcast before this sudden
assault, let fall two happy tears, but a feeble gesture of the hand
besought his mercy. "Let us talk of _him_," she went on
breathlessly. "His elevation of character--"

"If he were to marry, now?" the Doctor suggested. "Have you thought
of that?"

"Sometimes," she admitted, with a flutter of the breath, which
sounded almost like a sigh.

"It would serve to perpetuate--"

"But where to find one worthy of him? She must be capable of rising
to his level; rather, of continuing there."

"You are sure that is necessary? Now, in my experience," the Doctor
inclined his head to one side and rubbed his chin softly between
thumb and forefinger--a favourite trick of his when diagnosing a
case--"in my observation, rather, some disparity of temper, taste,
character, may almost be postulated of a completely happy alliance;
as in chemistry you bring together an acid and an alkali, and, always
provided they don't explode--"

"_He_ would never be satisfied with that. Believe me, the woman he
condescends upon must, in return for that happy privilege, surrender
her whole fate into his hands. Beneath his deference to our sex he
carries an imperious will, and would demand no less."

"There _is_ a little bit of that about him, now you mention it,"
assented the Doctor.

"But let us not cheat--" Miss Marty checked herself suddenly.
"Let us not vex ourselves with any such apprehensions. He will never
marry, I am convinced. I cannot imagine him in the light of a
parent--with offspring, for instance. Rather, when I see him in his
regimentals, or, again, in his mayoral robe and chain--you have
noticed how they become him?--"

The Doctor admitted, with a faint sigh, that he had.

"Well, then, he puts me in mind of that--what d'you call it, which
the poets tell us is reproduced but once in several hundred years?"

"The blossoming aloe?" suggested the D