e world."

"What I did mean is that you are an enigma; that I am frightened about
you; that you are no companion; because your thoughts--yes, and at times
your face, too--seem unnatural, unearthly, and separate you from others,
as they have separated you from this poor young man."

"I am what I was made," answered Stella with a little smile, "and I seek
company where I can find it. Some love the natural, some the spiritual,
and each receive from them their good. Why should they blame one
another?"

"Mad," muttered her father to himself as she left the room. "Mad as she
is charming and beautiful; or, if not mad, at least quite impracticable
and unfitted for the world. What a disappointment to me--what a bitter
disappointment! Well, I should be used to them by now."

Meanwhile, Morris was in his workshop in the old chapel entering up his
record of the day's experiments, which done, he drew his chair to the
stove and fell into thought. Somehow the idea of the engagement of Miss
Fregelius to Stephen Layard was not agreeable to him; probably because
he did not care about the young man. Yet, now that he came to think
of it quietly, in all her circumstances it would be an admirable
arrangement, and the offer undoubtedly was one which she had been wise
to accept. On the whole, such a marriage would be as happy as marriages
generally are. The man was honest, the man was young and rich, and very
soon the man would be completely at the disposal of his brilliant and
beautiful wife.

Personally he, Morris, would lose a friend, since a woman cannot marry
and remain the friend of another man. That, however, would probably have
happened in any case, and to object on this account, even in his secret
heart, would be abominably selfish. Indeed, what right had he even
to consider the matter? The young lady had come into his life very
strangely, and made a curious impression upon him; she was now going out
of it by ordinary channels, and soon nothing but the impression would
remain. It was proper, natural, and the way of the world; there was
nothing more to be said.

Somehow he was in a dreary mood, and everything bored him. He fetched
Mary's last letter. There was nothing in it but some chit-chat, except
the postscript, which was rather longer than the letter, and ran:

"I am glad to hear the young lady whom you fished up out of the sea
is such an assistance to you in your experiments. I gather from what I
hear--although you have