"I'm in love with somebody else," said she.

It was my turn to jump out of my chair.

"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at the
expression of my face: "only an ideal. I've never met the kind
of man I mean."

"Tell me about him. What does he look like?"

"Oh, he might look very much like you."

"How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that
I don't do? Just say the word,--teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut,
theosophist, superman. I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you
will only give me an idea what would please you."

She laughed at the elasticity of my character. "Well, in the
first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that,"
said she. "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt
himself to a silly girl's whim. But, above all, he must be a man
who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and
have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences.
It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he had
won; for they would be reflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton!
When I read his wife's life of him I could so understand her love!
And Lady Stanley! Did you ever read the wonderful last chapter
of that book about her husband? These are the sort of men that
a woman could worship with all her soul, and yet be the greater,