had never left off
seeking, opened new historical gardens to him and bade him come in and
dig.

Nearly every morning Loo went to the rectory to look up an obscure
reference or elucidate an uncertain period. Nearly every evening, after
the rectory dinner, he returned the books he had borrowed, and lingered
until past Sep's bedtime to discuss the day's reading. Septimus Marvin,
with an enthusiasm which is the reward of the simple-hearted, led the
way down the paths of history while Loo and Miriam followed--the man
with the quick perception of his race, the woman with that instinctive
and untiring search for the human motive which can put heart into a
printed page of history.

Many a whole lifetime has slipped away in such occupations; for history,
already inexhaustible, grows in bulk day by day. Marvin was happier
than he had ever been, for a great absorption is one of Heaven's kindest
gifts.

For Barebone, France and his quest there, the Marquis de Gemosac, Dormer
Colville, Juliette, lapsed into a sort of dream, while Farlingford
remained a quiet reality. Loo had not written to Dormer Colville.
Captain Clubbe was trading between Alexandria and Bristol. "The Last
Hope" was not to be expected in England before April. To communicate
with Colville would be to turn that past dream, not wholly pleasant,
into a grim reality. Loo therefore put off from day to day the evil
moment. By nature and by training he was a man of action. He tried to
persuade himself that he was made for a scholar and would be happy
to pass the rest of his days in the study of that history which had
occupied Septimus Marvin's thoughts during a whole lifetime.

Perhaps he was right. He might have been happy enough to pass his days
thus if life were unchanging; if Septimus Marvin should never age and
never die; if Miriam should be always there, with her light touch on the
deeper thoughts, her half-French way of understanding the unspoken, with
her steady friendship which might change, some day, into something else.
This was, of course, inconsistent. Love itself is the most inconsistent
of all human dreams; for it would have some things change and others
remain ever as they are. Whereas nothing stays unchanged for a single
day: love, least of all. For it must go forward or back.

"See!" cried Septimus Marvin, one evening, laying his hand on the
open book before him. "See how strong are racial things. Here are the
Bourbons for ever shutting their eyes t