skey--in hot Scotch
whiskey--in Scotch whiskey with the boilingest of boiling water, just
caught at the proper point of cooling. You don't know that point; I will
teach you; it is perfection. Don't you know that we have just caught the
cooling point of the earth--just that point in its transition from being
a molten mass to its becoming a chilled and played out stone that admits
of our living----"

"But, uncle," said Amy, "I thought the earth used to be far colder than
it is now. Remember the glacial period," added this profound student of
physics.

This was too much.

"Dear, dear me!" he exclaimed. "Am I to be brought up at every second by
a pert schoolgirl when I am expounding the mysteries of life? What have
your twopenny-halfpenny science primers to do with the grand secret of
toddy? I tell you we must _catch it at the cooling point_; and then,
Violet--for you are a respectful and attentive student--if the evening
is fine, and the air warm, and the windows open and looking out to the
south--do you think the doctor could object to that one first, faint
trial of a cigarette, just to make us think we are up again in the
August nights--off Isle Ornsay--with Aleck up at the bow singing that
hideous and melancholy song of his, and the Sea Pyot slowly creeping
along by the black islands?"

She did not answer at all; but for a brief moment her lip trembled. Amid
all this merriment she had sat with a troubled face, and with a sore and
heavy heart. She had seen in it but a pathetic bravado. He would drink
Scotch whiskey--he would once more light a cigarette--merely to assure
her that he was getting thoroughly well again; his laughter, his jokes,
his wild sallies were all meant, and she knew it, to give her strength
of heart and cheerfulness. She sat and listened, with her eyes cast
down. When she heard him talk lightly and playfully of all that he meant
to do, her heart throbbed, and she dared not lift her eyes to his face,
lest they should suddenly reveal to him that awful conflict within of
wild, and piteous, and agonizing doubt.

Then that reference to their wanderings in the northern seas--he did not
know how she trembled as he spoke. She could never even think of that
strange time she had spent up there, and of the terrible things that had
come of it, without a shudder. If she could have cut it out of her life
and memory altogether, that would have been well; but how could she
forget the agony of that awful farewel