“Oh, I don’t suppose it’s a complaint,” I said. “Merely an observation.”

“Before I was ten I knew almost as much about the reproductive systems of mollusks as Mr. Darwin,” she said. “My father bred everything from gamecocks to buffalo. He saw nothing wrong with my becoming a scientist, and he let me watch and learn. I suppose my studies have rather robbed me of sentiment where coupling is concerned. I’m more interested in energy than sentiment, if you please—though I do try to be cordial about things.

“Haven’t you found me to be cordial, Ben?” she asked, a little later.

“Oh, quite cordial,” I said—for even in her moments of disdain she had very winning eyes, and such beauty as to make you tolerant of the nettles in her words, even as you were being stung by them.

“You’re an irritating Yankee,” she said. “Are you going to be rude just because I don’t pretend I’ve fallen in love with you?”

“Cecily, I just wish you’d stay the night,” I said. “You never do. Don’t be so heartless. I know I was rather nervous earlier but I suspect a nap would repair that.”

She immediately got off the bed and took her hairbrush from my table, where she always put it.

“I certainly shan’t stay the night,” she said. “You’re an anatomical moron if you think my heart is the organ you’ve been invited to apply your attentions to.”

Fool that I am, I did like the way she put things—not another woman of my acquaintance could have put the matter so crisply, not even my crisp wife.

Cecily started for the door and then turned and gave me one of those perplexing smiles that haunt me still.

“Visit our aquarium, Ben,” she said. “Consider the mollusks. See if you can tell the difference between the male and the female. You’ll have to look closer than you’ve looked at me, I’ll assure you.”

“You come in the dark and you leave in the dark,” I pointed out.

“My room is next to yours,” she said. “I don’t recall that you’ve made the slightest effort to detain me in the daytime.”

“You seem so bent on study,” I said, feeling doltish again. “But perhaps I will visit the aquarium. What if I do?”

Cecily smiled again.

“Oh, we’ll have a little tutorial some evening,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll have to pass a little examination to see if you’re capable of summoning the powers of observation that a prominent author ought to have.”

“Now you’re mocking me,” I said.