as he looked into the
distance and Miss Quincey imagined that his bumpy intellectual forehead
was bulging with great thoughts. And now Miss Quincey supplied a
convenient pivot for the wild gyrations of his wrath. He got up and with
his hands behind his back he seemed to be lashing himself into a fury
with his coat-tail.

"The whole thing is one-sided and artificial and absurd. Bad enough for
men, but fatal for women. Any system that unfits them for their proper
functions--"

"And do we know--have we decided--yet--what they are?" Miss Quincey was
anxious to sustain her part in the dialogue with credit.

He stared, not at the distance but at her.

"Why, surely," he said more gently, "to be women first--to be wives and
mothers."

She drew her cape a little closer round her and turned from him with
half-shut eyes. She seemed at once to be protecting herself against
his theory and blinding her sight to her own perishing and thwarted
woman-hood.

"All Nature is against it," he said.

"Nature?" she repeated feebly.

"Yes, Nature; and she'll go her own way in spite of all the systems that
ever were. Don't you know---you are a teacher, so you ought to know--that
overstrain of the higher faculties is sometimes followed by astonishing
demonstrations on the part of Nature?"

Miss Quincey replied that no cases of the kind had come under _her_
notice.

"Well--your profession ought to go hand-in-hand with mine. If you only
saw the half of what we see--But you only see the process; we get the
results. By the way I must go and look at some of them."

His words echoed madly in a feverish little brain, "Ought to
go--hand-in-hand--hand-in-hand with mine."

"Nature can be very cruel," said she.

Something in her tone recalled him from his flight. He stood looking down
at her, thoughtful and pitiful. "And Nature can be very kind; kinder than
we are. You are a case in point. Nature is trying to make you well
against your will. A little more rest--a little more exercise--a little
more air--"

She smiled. Yes, a little more of all the things she wanted and had never
had. That was what her smile said in its soft and deprecating bitterness.

He held out his hand, and she too rose, shivering a little in her thin
dress.

She was the first to hurry away.

He looked after her small figure, noted her nervous gait and the agitated
movement of her hand as the streamers on her poor cape flapped and
fluttered, the sport of the unf