"Ah, you never heard that, and, dear Captain Alec, you wouldn't have
understood it if you had. You thought he was reciting poems. What he was
really doing--"

"Look here, Doctor Mary, I've just been accepted by Cynthia, and I'm
going to take her to my mother and father. Can you get your mind on to
that?" He looked at her curiously, not at all understanding her
excitement, perhaps resenting the obvious fact that his Cynthia's
happiness was not foremost in her friend's mind.

With a great effort Mary brought herself down to the earth--to the earth
of romantic love from the heaven of professional triumph. True, the
latter was hers, the former somebody else's. "I do beg your pardon. I do
indeed. And do let me kiss you again, Cynthia darling--and you, dear
Captain Alec, just once! And then you shall go off to dinner." She
laughed excitedly. "Yes, I'm going to push you out."

"Let's go, Alec," said Cynthia, not unkindly, yet just a little
pettishly. The great moment of her life--surely as great a moment as
there had ever been in anybody's life--had hardly earned adequate
recognition from Mary. As usual, her feelings and Alec's were at one.
Before they passed to other and more important matters, when they drove
off in the car she said to Alec, "It seems to me that Mary's strangely
interested in that Mr. Beaumaroy. Had she been dreaming of him, Alec?"

"Looks like it! And why the devil Morocco?" His intellect baffled,
Captain Alec took refuge in his affections.

Left alone, and so thankful for it, Doctor Mary did not attempt to sit