they found Miss Du Prel in the gloomiest of moods. Affection,
love?--the very blood and bones of tragedy. Solitude, indifference?--its
heart. And if for men the world was a delusion, for women it was a
torture-chamber. Nature was dead against them.

"Why do you say that?" asked Hadria.

"Because of the blundering, merciless way she has made us; because of
the needs that she has put into our hearts, and the preposterous payment
that she demands for their fulfilment; because of the equally
preposterous payment she exacts, if we elect to do without that which
she teaches us to yearn for."

Professor Fortescue, admitting the dilemma, laid the blame on the
stupidity of mankind.

The discussion was excited, for Valeria would not allow the guilt to be
thus shifted. In vain the Professor urged that Nature offers a large
choice to humanity, for the developing, balancing, annulling of its
various forces of good and evil, and that it is only when the choice is
made that heredity steps in and fixes it. This process simulates
Necessity, or what we call Nature. "Heredity may be a powerful friend,
or a bitter enemy, according as we treat her," he said.

"Then our sex must have treated her very badly!" cried Miss Du Prel.

"Or _our_ sex must have obliged yours to treat her badly, which comes
to the same thing," said the Professor.

They had agreed to take a walk by the river, towards Ballochcoil. It was
hoped that the fresh air and sunshine would cheer Miss Du Prel. The
Professor led the conversation to her favourite topic: ancient Greek
literature, but this only inspired her to quote the discouraging opinion
of the _Medea_ of Euripedes.

The Professor laughed. "I see it is a really bad attack," he said. "I
sympathize. I have these inconsolable moods myself, sometimes."

They came upon the Greek temple on the cliff-side, and paused there to
rest, for a few minutes. It was too cold to linger long under the
slender columns. They walked on, till they came in sight of the bare
little church of Ballochcoil.

The Professor instinctively turned to compare the two buildings. "The
contrast between them is so extraordinary!" he exclaimed.

Nothing could have been more eloquent of the difference in the modes of
thought which they respectively represented.

"If only they had not made such fools of their women, I should like to
have lived at Athens in the time of Pericles!" exclaimed Hadria.

"I," said Valeria, "would choose rather