“I don’t believe he’s that bad,” responded Eve.  “I wish you’d tell me what you think of him, Doctor.”

“Mr. Herrick?  Well, aside from his intemperance—­”

“No, I’m in earnest, please.  Afterwards I’ll tell you why I ask—­perhaps.”

“I think him a very nice young man, Miss Eve, don’t you?”

“Ye-es.”

“I wouldn’t call him strictly handsome; he doesn’t remind me of the copper-engraved pictures of Lord Byron, who, when I was a lad, was considered the standard of masculine beauty, but he looks like a man, which is something that Byron didn’t, to my thinking.”

“But do you—­do you think he’s sincere?”

“Lord, bless me, yes!  I’d stake my word on his being that if nothing else.”

“Even if he is a mining man?” asked Eve, with a smile.

“H’m, well, I guess there are honest mining men as well as honest lawyers.”

“Yes, I think he’s honest,” said Eve, thoughtfully, “but as to sincerity—­”

“Aren’t they the same?”

“Perhaps they are,” answered Eve, doubtfully.  She was silent for a moment, possibly considering the question.  Then she looked across at the Doctor with a little flush in her cheeks.  “You see,” she said, “he—­he’s asked me to marry him.”

The Doctor rolled his cane under his palms and nodded his head slowly several times.  Eve waited.  At last—­

“You don’t seem much surprised,” she said, questioningly.

“Surprised?  No.  I’d have been surprised if he hadn’t asked you to marry him, my dear.  It’s what I’d have done in his place.”

“And I’d have accepted you,” said Eve with a little laugh.

“And him?” asked the Doctor.

Eve was silent, looking across the garden.  Finally she shrugged her slim shoulders and sighed.

“I don’t know,” she said, frankly.

“Well,” began the Doctor, slowly and judicially.  Then he stopped, wondering what he had started to say.

“Why should I?” challenged Eve, a trifle querulously.

“You shouldn’t, unless you feel that you want to.”

“But I don’t know whether I want to—­or don’t want to.”

The Doctor studied her face a moment, until her eyes dropped and the flush deepened in her cheeks.  Unseen of her, he smiled.

“Take plenty of time to find out,” said the Doctor, softly and kindly.  “Don’t marry him until you are sure that you can’t be happy without him, my dear.  Don’t try it as an experiment.  That’s what makes unhappy marriages; at least, that’s one thing.  There are others too numerous to mention.  There’s just one reason why a man and a woman should join themselves together in matrimony, and that is love, the love that the poets sing and the rest of us poke fun at, the love that is the nearest thing to Heaven we find on earth.”  The Doctor sat silent a moment, looking past the girl’s grave face into the green blur of the garden.  Then he stirred, sighed, and looked at his watch.  “Well, well, I must be on my way,” he said briskly.  “I’m a vastly busy old man.”