Boy; it did to me;--but he said, that the woman he found then was his ideal of womanhood, and that from that hour he wanted me for his own as he had never wanted anything before." Jane paused, and looked into the glowing heart of the fire.
The doctor turned slowly and looked at Jane.

He himself had experienced the intense attraction of her womanliness,--all the more overpowering when it was realised, because it did not appear upon the surface.

He had sensed the strong mother-tenderness lying dormant within her; had known that her arms would prove a haven of refuge, her bosom a soothing pillow, her love a consolation unspeakable.

In his own days of loneliness and disappointment, the doctor had had to flee from this in Jane,--a precious gift, so easy to have taken because of her very ignorance of it; but a gift to which he had no right.

Thus the doctor could well understand the hold it would gain upon a man who had discovered it, and who was free to win it for his own.
But he only said, "I do not think it odd, dear." Jane had forgotten the doctor.