This line of reasoning invariably ended in his laughing at his own folly in expecting an acquaintance to act as if she were an intimate friend, and wanting real life to approach the romantic standard of the novelist. That had been the trouble all along. He had asked too much of life.
She was so wonderful, that Rain-Girl. She was a tramp; yet carried with her a soft, feminine frock and had once played the concertina with which to woo the great god Pan! How astonished Olympus must have been at the sight. Why did he want to see her again? Why did life seem somehow to revolve round her? Why, above all, oh! why, a thousand times why, did her face keep presenting itself to his waking vision? In dreams she was paramount, that was understandable, but
"When a man has a few hundred pounds between himself and the Great Adventure, it's better for him not to think about a girl."
"On the contrary, my dear fellow, it's just the moment when he should begin to think seriously about her."
Beresford had unconsciously uttered his thoughts aloud, as he stood at the window, watching the sun through the pine-wood opposite, and Tallis entering unheard, had answered him.
"Now it's you who are the idealist," smiled Beresford.
"If a doctor has an eye for anything but a microbe, he'll recognise that love is a great healer.
