l woman, strongly feminine, from the rich coils of her
light-coloured hair to the dainty garden slipper which peeped from
under her cream-tinted dress. One tiny well-gloved hand was
outstretched in greeting, while the other pressed a thick,
green-covered volume against her side. Her decision and quick, tactful
manner bespoke the mature woman of the world; but her upraised face had
preserved a girlish and even infantile expression of innocence in its
large, fearless, grey eyes, and sensitive, humorous mouth. Mrs.
O'James was a widow, and she was two-and-thirty years of age; but
neither fact could have been deduced from her appearance.

"You will surely go in and see Mrs. Esdaile," she repeated, glancing up
at him with eyes which had in them something between a challenge and a
caress.

"I did not come to see Mrs. Esdaile," he answered, with no relaxation
of his cold and grave manner; "I came to see you."

"I am sure I should be highly honoured," she said, with just the
slightest little touch of brogue in her accent. "What are the students
to do without their Professor?"

"I have already completed my academic duties. Take my arm, and we
shall walk in the sunshine. Surely we cannot wonder that Eastern
people should have made a deity of the sun. It is the great beneficent
force of Nature--man's ally against cold, sterility, and all that is
abhorrent to him. What were you reading?"

"Hale's Matter and Life."

The Professor raised his thick eyebrows.

"Hale!" he said, and then again in a kind of whisper, "Hale!"

"You differ from him?" she asked.

"It is not I who differ from him. I am only a monad--a thing of no
moment. The whole tendency of the highest plane of modern thought
differs from him. He defends the indefensible. He is an excellent
observer, but a feeble reasoner. I should not recommend you to found
your conclusions upon Hale."

"I must read Nature's Chronicle to counteract his pernicious
influence," said Mrs. O'James, with a soft, cooing laugh.

Nature's Chronicle was one of the many books in which Professor Ainslie
Grey had enforced the negative doctrines of scientific agnosticism.

"It is a faulty work," said he; "I cannot recommend it. I would rather
refer you to the standard writings of some of my older and more
eloquent colleagues."

There was a pause in their talk as they paced up and down on the green,
velvet-like lawn in the genial sunshine.

"Have you thought at all," he ask