rest. Perhaps he would kindly vouchsafe us his
attention for a moment."

Raper was, however, at that moment deaf to all such appeals; his spirit
was as though wandering free beneath the shade of leafy bowers or along
the sedgy banks of some clear lake.

"You remember Dante's lines, Polly, and how he describes--

"'La divina foresta--
Che agli occhi tempera va il nuovo giorno,
Senza piu aspettar lasciai la riva,
Preudendo la campagna lento lento.'

How beautiful the repetition of the word 'lento;' how it conveys the
slow reluctance of his step!"

"There is, to my thinking, even a more graceful instance in Metastasio,"
said Polly:--

"'L' onda che mormora, Fra sponda e sponda, L' aura che tremola, Fra
fronda e fronda."

"Raper, Raper,--do you hear me, I say?" cried Fagan, as he knocked
angrily with his knuckles on the table.

"We are sorry, Miss Fagan," interposed Crowther, "to interrupt such
intellectual pleasure, but business has its imperative claims."

"I 'm ready--quite ready, sir," said Joe, rising in confusion, and
hastening across the room to where the others sat.

"Take a seat, sir," said Fagan, peremptorily; "for here are some points
which require full explanation. And I would beg to remind you that if
the cultivation of your mind, as I have heard it called, interferes with
your attention to office duties, it would be as well to seek out some
more congenial sphere for its development than my humble house. I'm
too poor a man for such luxurious dalliance, Mr. Raper." These words,
although spoken in a whisper, were audible to him to whom they were
addressed, and he heard them in a state of half-stupefied amazement.
"For the present, I must call your attention to this. What is it?"

Raper was no sooner in the midst of figures and calculations than all
his instincts of office-life recalled him to himself, and he began
rapidly but clearly to explain the strange and confused-looking
documents which were strewn before him, and Crowther could not but feel
struck by the admirable memory and systematic precision which alone
could derive information from such disorderly materials. Even Fagan
himself was so carried away by a momentary impulse of enthusiasm as to
say, "When a man is capable of such a statement at this, what a disgrace
that he should fritter away his faculties with rhymes and legends!"

"Mr. Raper is a philosopher, sir; he despises the base pursuits and
grovelling ambitions of us lo