“Oh, not necessarily,” said Queed, and sat down in the chair by her, Major Brooke’s chair.  “He is a most unsocial sort of man,”—­this from the little Doctor!—­“and I doubt if he knows anybody better than he knows me.  That he knows me so well is due solely to the fact that we have been forced on each other three times a day for over a year.  For the first month or so after I came here, we remained entire strangers, I remember, and passed each other on the stairs without speaking.  Gradually, however, he has come to take a great fancy to me.”

“And is that why you are going off to a honeymoon cottage with him?”

“Hardly.  I am going because it will be the best sort of arrangement for me.”

“Oh!”

“I will pay, you see,” said Queed, “no more than I am paying here; for that matter, I have no doubt that I could beat him down to five dollars a week, if I cared to do so.  In return I shall have decidedly greater comforts and conveniences, far greater quiet and independence, and complete freedom from interruptions and intrusions.  The arrangement will be a big gain in several ways for me.”

“And have you taken a great fancy to Professor Nicolovius, too?”

“Oh, no!—­not at all.  But that has very little to do with it.  At least he has the great gift of silence.”

Sharlee looked at his absorbed face closely.  She thought that his head in profile was very fine, though certainly his nose was too prominent for beauty.  But what she was wondering was whether the little Doctor had really changed so much after all.

“Well,” said she, slowly, “I’m sorry you’re going.”

“Sorry—­why?  It would appear to me that under the tenets of your religion you ought to be glad.  You ought to compliment me for going.”

“I don’t find anything in the tenets of my religion that requires you to go off and room-keep with Professor Nicolovius.”

“You do not?  It is a tremendous kindness to him, I assure you.  To have a place of his own has long been his dream, he tells me; but he cannot afford it without the financial assistance I would give.  Again, even if he could finance it, he would not venture to try it alone, because of his health.  It appears that he is subject to some kind of attacks—­heart, I suppose—­and does not want to be alone.  I have heard him walking his floor at 3 o’clock in the morning.  Do you know anything about his life?”

“No.  Nothing.”

“I know everything.”

He paused for her to ask him questions, that he might have the pleasure of refusing her.  But instead of prying, Sharlee said:  “Still I’m sorry that you are going.”

“Well?  Why?”

“Because,” said Sharlee.

“Proceed.”

“Because I don’t like his eyes.”

“The question, from your point of view,” said Mr. Queed, “is a moral—­not an optic one.  These acts which confer benefits on others,” he continued, “so peculiarly commended by your religion, are conceived by it to work moral good to the doer.  The eyes (which you use synecdochically to represent the character) of the person to whom they are done, have nothing—­”