thought. Well, if only to please him I must try to study the New Testament over again, and as thoroughly as I can. No, not to please him, though, but for the sake of being quite honest. I would much rather be working at that new book of Tyndall's."




CHAPTER XV. An Interval

     How can man love but what he yearns to help?  R. Browning
During the year of Erica's illness, Brian began to realize his true position toward her better than he had hitherto done.
He saw quite well that any intrusion of his love, even any slight manifestation of it, might do untold harm. She was not ready for it yet why, he could not have told.
The truth was, that his Undine, although in many respects a high-souled woman, was still in some respects a child. She would have been merely embarrassed by his love; she did not want it. She liked him very much as an acquaintance; he was to her Tom's friend, or her doctor, or perhaps Mr. Osmond's son. In this way she liked him, was even fond of him, but as a lover he would have been a perplexing embarrassment.
He knew well enough that her frank liking boded ill for his future success; but in spite of that he could not help being glad to obtain any footing with her. It was something even to be "Tom's friend Brian." He delighted in hearing his name from her lips, although knowing that it was no good augury. He lived on from day to day, thinking very little of the doubtful future as long as he could serve her in the present. A reserved and silent man, devoted to his profession, and to practical science of every kind, few people guessed that he could have any particular story of his own. He was not at all the sort of man who would be expected to fall hopelessly in love at first sight, nor would any one have selected him as a good modern specimen of the chivalrous knight of olden times; he was so completely a nineteenth-century man, so progressive, so scientific. But, though his devotion was of the silent order, it was, perhaps for that reason, all the truer. There was about him a sort of divine patience. As long as he could serve Erica, he was content to wait any number of years in the hope of winning her love. He accepted his position readily. He knew that she had not the slightest love for him.