"But I will not present him to you, Dorothy, however much you may wish to
meet him," I said positively.

"It is almost an insult, Cousin Malcolm, for you to say that I wish to
meet him," she answered in well-feigned indignation.

The French blood in my veins moved me to shrug my shoulders. I could do
nothing else. With all my knowledge of womankind this girl had sent me to
sea.

But what shall we say of Dorothy's conduct? I fancy I can hear you mutter,
"This Dorothy Vernon must have been a bold, immodest, brazen girl."
Nothing of the sort. Dare you of the cold blood--if perchance there be any
with that curse in their veins who read these lines--dare you, I say, lift
your voice against the blessed heat in others which is but a greater,
stronger, warmer spark of God's own soul than you possess or than you can
comprehend? "Evil often comes of it," I hear you say. That I freely admit;
and evil comes from eating too much bread, and from hearing too much
preaching. But the universe, from the humblest blade of grass to the
infinite essence of God, exists because of that warmth which the mawkish
world contemns. Is the iron immodest when it creeps to the lodestone and
clings to its side? Is the hen bird brazen when she flutters to her mate
responsive to his compelling woo-song? Is the seed immodest when it sinks
into the ground and swells with budding life? Is the cloud bold when it
softens into rain and falls to earth because it has no other choice? or is
it brazen when it nestles for a time on the bosom of heaven's arched dome
and sinking into the fathomless depths of a blue black infinity ceases to
be itself? Is the human soul immodest when, drawn by a force it cannot
resist, it seeks a stronger soul which absorbs its ego as the blue sky
absorbs the floating cloud, as the warm earth swells the seed, as the