TWO HISTORIES ARE ALMOST FINISHED. Hermia saw a great deal of Quintard. They walked together, they rode together, and circumstances frequently forced them into each other’s society for hours at a time. She liked him more with every interview, but she did not feel a throb of love for him. The snow on her nature’s volcano was deep as the ashes which buried Pompeii. He had many opportunities to put his wearing qualities to the test. Once they met at a fashionable winter rendezvous in the country. The other women were of the Helen Simms type; the rest of the men belonged to the Winston brotherhood. For the greater part of four days Hermia and Quintard devoted themselves exclusively to each other. When they were not riding across the country or rambling through the windy woods, they sat in the library and told stories by the fire. One day they had wandered far into the woods and come upon a hemlock glen, down one side of which tumbled melting snow over great jutting rocks that sprang from the mountain side. Quintard and Hermia climbed to a ledge that overhung one of the rocky platforms and sat down. About and above them rose the forest, but the wind was quiet; there was no sound but the dull roar of the cataract. A more romantic spot was not in America, but Quintard could not have been more matter-of-fact had he been in a street-car. He had never betrayed any feeling he may have had for her by a flash of his eye. He discussed with her subjects dangerous and tender, but always with the cold control of the impersonal analyst. He smoked for a few moments in silence and then said abruptly: “Don’t imagine that I am going to discuss religion with you; it is a question which does not interest me at all. But do you believe in the immortality of the soul?” “No,” said Hermia. “Why not?” Hermia lifted her shoulders: “I have never thought agnosticism needed defense.” “Agnosticism is the religion of the intellectual, of course. But I have some private reasons for going a step beyond agnosticism, and believing in the persistence of personality. Do you want to hear them?” “Yes,” said Hermia, “but it all comes down to the same proposition. Religion has its stronghold in Ego the Great. _La vie, c’est moi!_ I am, therefore must ever be! Now and forever! World without end!” “I refuse to be snubbed beforehand. Why are children so frequently the ancestors of their family’s talent? When heredity cannot account for genius, what better explanation than that of the re-embodiment of an unquenchable individuality? The second reason is a more sentimental one. Why is a man never satisfied until he meets the woman he really loves, and why are his instincts so keen and sure when he does meet her? Why, also, does he so often dwell with the ideal of her before he sees her in material form?”