Here, indeed, was a most humiliating, an epoch-making, confession to come from the little Doctor.  It was accompanied with a vague smile, intended to be cheering and just the thing for a sick-room.  But the dominant note in this smile was bewildered and depressed helplessness, and at it the maternal instinct sprang full-grown in Fifi’s thin little bosom.  A passionate wish to mother the little Doctor tugged at her heart.

“You know what you need, Mr. Queed?  Friends—­lots of good friends—­”

He winced as from a blow.  “I assure you—­”

“Yes—­you—­DO!” said Fifi, with surprising emphasis for so weak a little voice.  “You need first a good girl friend, one lots older and better than me—­one just like Sharlee.  O if only you and she would be friends!—­she’d be the very best in the world!  And then you need men friends, plenty of them, and to go around with them, and everything.  You ought to like men more, Mr. Queed!  You ought to learn to be like them, and—­”

“Be like them!” he interrupted, “I am like them.  Why,” he conceded generously, “I am one of them.”

Fifi dismissed this with a smile, but he immediately added:  “Has it occurred to you that, apart from my greater concentration on my work, I am different from other men?”

“Why, Mr. Queed, you are no more like them than I am!  You don’t do any of the things they do.  You don’t—­”

“Such as what?  Now, Fifi, let us be definite as we go along.  Suppose that it was my ambition to be, as you say, like other men.  Just what things, in your opinion, should I do?”

“Well, smoke—­that’s one thing that all men do.  And fool around more with people—­laugh and joke, and tell funny stories and all.  And then you could take an interest in your appearance—­your clothes, you know; and be interested in all sorts of things going on around you, like politics and baseball.  And go to see girls and take them out sometimes, like to the theatre.  Some men that are popular drink, but of course I don’t care for that.”

Fifi, of course, had no idea that the little Doctor’s world had been shattered to its axis that morning by three minutes’ talk from Colonel Cowles.  Therefore, though conscious that there never was a man who did not get a certain pleasure from talking himself over, she was secretly surprised at the patience, even the interest, with which he listened to her.  She would have been still more surprised to know that his wonderful memory was nailing down every word with machine-like accuracy.

She expounded her little thesis in considerable detail, and at the end he said:—­

“As I’ve told you, Fifi, my first duty is toward my book—­to give it to the cause of civilization at the earliest possible moment.  Therefore, the whole question is one of time, rather than of deliberate personal inclination.  At present I literally cannot afford to give time to matters which, while doubtless pleasant enough in their fashion—­”