Sophie shrank at this, remembering how lately she had fed herself with the same idea.  She had learned a great deal about herself since discovering how little of herself she knew.

“He is a—­man!” said she, trying to throw into the word an expression of its best and loftiest meaning.  “I can do very little to help him.”

“Hope to see him a man some day, my dear,” returned the professor, gathering his eyebrows.  “Has a great many faults at present.  Why, in some respects, he’s as ignorant and inexperienced as a child.  Very one-sided affair still, I fear, that soul of his!”

“One-sided, papa?”

“Yes:  don’t believe it would carry him very far toward heaven, as it is now,” said the old gentleman, whose severity of judgment was cultivated in this instance as a preservative against possible disappointment.  “He needs melting in a crucible.”

“What does that mean?”

“If you weren’t a wise little woman, as I said, I shouldn’t be talking about my pupil’s character and management with you, my dear.  But I can trust you as well as if you were forty;” and here he gave her another little hug, which made Sophie feel like a receiver of stolen goods.  “Well, now, theorizing won’t do a young fellow like that much good.  He needs something real—­that he can take hold of, and that’ll take hold of him.  You and I can’t give it him—­not more than an impetus in the right direction, at any rate.  But the only thing that can make his future tolerably secure—­make it safe to count upon him (or upon any other man, for that matter), is for him to fall heartily and soundly in love, in the old-fashioned way, and with a strong-hearted, worthy woman.”

“O papa! do you really think marriage will help him to be greater and better?”

“It’s the only thing for him, my dear,” said Professor Valeyon; and, although he was looking his guilty little daughter straight in the face, and at such short range, too, this would-be sharp-sighted old man of wisdom never thought to ask himself why she blushed so.  “As soon as he gets well again, I must see to getting him somewhere where he can have a chance to profit by what we have done for him.”

“Papa,” said Sophie, sitting up, and stroking the old gentleman’s white beard, “you don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you think that to love and to be loved will be good for him.”

“So anxious to get rid of him, eh?”

“No; oh! papa, don’t you see? it’s because—­because I never want to get rid of him!” and Sophie, catching her father suddenly around the neck, hid her face in his linen coat-collar.

The professor, his features discharged of all expression, sat stone-still, looking straight before him.  Had Death been embracing him, instead of his daughter, he could hardly have been struck more motionless.  Existence, spiritual as well as physical, seemed for a space to have come to a stand-still.

By-and-by, startled at his silence, Sophie raised her head and looked at him with alarmed eyes.  With an effort, he turned his face toward her, and smiled as naturally as though his mouth had been frozen.