walk, and looked earnestly and expectantly down at her.

A struggle was evidently going on in her mind. Her eyes were cast
down, her little slipper tapped the lawn, and her fingers played
nervously with her chatelain. Suddenly, with a sharp, quick gesture
which had in it something of ABANDON and recklessness, she held out her
hand to her companion.

"I accept," she said.

They were standing under the shadow of the hawthorn. He stooped
gravely down, and kissed her glove-covered fingers.

"I trust that you may never have cause to regret your decision," he
said.

"I trust that you never may," she cried, with a heaving breast.

There were tears in her eyes, and her lips twitched with some strong
emotion.

"Come into the sunshine again," said he. "It is the great restorative.
Your nerves are shaken. Some little congestion of the medulla and
pons. It is always instructive to reduce psychic or emotional
conditions to their physical equivalents. You feel that your anchor is
still firm in a bottom of ascertained fact."

"But it is so dreadfully unromantic," said Mrs. O'James, with her old
twinkle.

"Romance is the offspring of imagination and of ignorance. Where
science throws her calm, clear light there is happily no room for
romance."

"But is not love romance?" she asked.

"Not at all. Love has been taken away from the poets, and has been
brought within the domain of true science. It may prove to be one of
the great cosmic elementary forces. When the atom of hydrogen draws
the atom of chlorine towards it to form the perfected molecule of
hydrochloric acid, the force which it exerts may be intrinsically
similar to that which draws me to you. Attraction and repulsion appear
to be the primary forces. This is attraction."

"And here is repulsion," said Mrs. O'James, as a stout, florid lady
came sweeping across the lawn in their direction. "So glad you have
come out, Mrs. Esdaile! Here is Professor Grey."

"How do you do, Professor?" said the lady, with some little pomposity
of manner. "You were very wise to stay out here on so lovely a day.
Is it not heavenly?"

"It is certainly very fine weather," the Professor answered.

"Listen to the wind sighing in the trees!" cried Mrs. Esdaile, holding
up one finger. "It is Nature's lullaby. Could you not imagine it,
Professor Grey, to be the whisperings of angels?"

"The idea had not occurred to me, madam."

"Ah, Professor, I have always the same