“You are unhappy, my own Bronto,” she said, with the pretty solicitude of a young wife. “Not unhappy, merely thoughtful, my love. This good world--the lakes and rivers, the trees and groves of club mosses--all; I sometimes think it can hardly have been created for us.” “Not for us!” “Not for us and our friends alone. Perhaps some day something greater, wiser, better even than Brontosaurus Excelsus may browse here, and swim these rivers, and lift its head to the sun.” “This is mere moonshine, my dearest. Greater than you! Is it possible to be greater than a hundred feet long? Is it possible to be heavier than fifty tons? And, for the rest, who should know your goodness and wisdom better than I? No, no; you let your humility run away with you, my sweet. You are the first and best--Nature’s masterpiece, her joy, her unutterable delight.” “There’s Atlantosaurus,” said Bronto dubiously. His wife frowned, and her huge lizard eyes were clouded. “There is Atlantosaurus,” she admitted, “the hulking, bloodthirsty, ignoble wretch! A thing that eats other live creatures--a debased, degraded, distant relation--a cannibal! Nature blushes when she thinks of him and his kind; but we, we are upon a plane apart; we eat the green grass, the juicy cane, the young fronds and ripe fruit of the palms; we----” A shadow hid the sun. High above the trees rose a dreadful head with eyes like bicycle-wheels and teeth that glittered and dropped blood. “It’s Atlanto--this is no place for us!” Two simultaneous splashes cast a huge column of water upward as Brontosaurus and his better half vanished beneath that Mesozoic river. III Again some odd millions upon millions of years have swept by in the eternal procession of Time, and we find Professor Jebbway, F.R.S., etc., etc., sitting disconsolate at his desk, with a review of his last monumental work in his hands. The reviewer was absolutely uninformed concerning Professor Jebbway’s recondite subject; he had therefore been wise enough simply to gush and gloat through four columns of his journal, and declare that no such achievement of the human brain could be recorded since the stupendous life-work of Darwin. Mrs. Jebbway brought in a cup of tea and rated the Professor. “I’m sure that’s nothing to be so precious glum about,” she said. “The man’s all butter, from start to finish. If his blessed paper mattered, it might do you some good. I read it yesterday.” “It isn’t that. From this gentleman, praise or blame are equally unimportant. I’m a little overburdened with my own limitations to-day. I wish I’d come later, when the world knew more.” “It never will know more. It knows too much already, thanks to men like you--that is if I read the Scriptures aright.” “No--we’re only at the outset. A man’s such an unfinished, incomplete, futile, short-lived machine. Just the dawning of a few senses done up in a poor, puny envelope.”