He wanted to gather her up in his arms and smother and caress her, after that climax of tender admission, but she waved her hand as she saw him rising.  He fell back then upon his ignoble habit of talking vast science to her.

“My dear, that dream may, I hope, be realized.  I’d rather have my face slashed by you than be shaved by the most careful, conscientious and silent barber in all Christendom, but shaving is a matter of much gravity.  It is not the removal of the beard which tests the intellect; it is the sharpening of the razors.”

“How is that, sir?”

“All razors are feminine, and things of moods.  The razor you sharpen to-day may not be sharp, though manipulated upon hone or strap with all persistence and all skill.  The razor you sharpen to-morrow may be far more tractable.  Furthermore, the razor which is comparatively dull to-day may be sharp to-morrow, without further treatment.”

She said that, in her opinion, that was nonsense, and that he was trying to impose upon a friendless girl, because the topic was one of which men would, ordinarily, have a monopoly, and regarding which they would assume all wisdom, and, perhaps, make jests.

“I am in earnest,” he said.  “Razors have moods, and are known to sulk.  But science has solved the conundrum of their antics.  It has been discovered that whetting changes the location of the molecules of metal, that there is frequently left what is not a perfect edge after the supposed sharpening, but that, given time, the molecules will readjust themselves, and the edge return.  My dear, you are now, or at least should be, a woman rarely learned in one great mystery.  Is there no reward for merit?”

She scorned reply to such a screed, but slid down from her perch with the remark that she had “et hearty.”  A man who had eaten near them in a restaurant had used the expression, and they had both promptly adopted it.

He rose, went to her side, and leaned over, and inhaled the perfume of her hair.

She looked up mischievously.  “You are a big black animal!”

As already remarked, these two were very foolish.

That same evening, when Grant Harlson reached his office, he found a note awaiting him.  It was a pretty, perfumed thing, and he knew the handwriting upon it well.  He had not seen the writer for three months.  He had almost forgotten her existence, yet she had been one with whom his life had been, upon a time, closely associated.  He opened the envelope and read the note: 

MY DEAR GRANT:  Yon know I am philosophical—­for a woman—­and that I have never been exacting.  I have formed habits, though, and have certain foolish ways.  One of these ways was to be much with Grant Harlson, not very long ago.  I lost him, somehow, but still have a curiosity to see his face again, to note if it has changed.  I have something to say to him, too.  Please call upon me to-night.  ADA.