* * * * * The young man hesitated, looking long and earnestly at Miss Barrison. "Did you marry her?" she asked, softly. "You wouldn't believe it," said the young man, earnestly--"you wouldn't believe it, after all that happened, if I should tell you that she married Professor Bruce Stoddard, of Columbia--would you?" "Yes, I would," said Miss Barrison. "You never can tell what a girl will do." "That story of yours," I said, "is to me the most wonderful and valuable contribution to nature study that it has ever been my fortune to listen to. You are fitted to write; it is your sacred mission to produce. Are you going to?" "I am writing," said the young man, quietly, "a nature book. Sir Peter Grebe's magnificent monograph on the speckled titmouse inspired me. But nature study is not what I have chosen as my life's mission." He looked dreamily across at Miss Barrison. "No, not natural phenomena," he repeated, "but unnatural phenomena. What Professor Hyssop has done for Columbia, I shall attempt to do for Harvard. In fact, I have already accepted the chair of Psychical Phenomena at Cambridge." I gazed upon him with intense respect. "A personal experience revealed to me my life's work," he, went on, thoughtfully stroking his blond mustache. "If Miss Barrison would care to hear it--" "Please tell it," she said, sweetly. "I shall have to relate it clothed in that artificial garb known as literary style," he explained, deprecatingly. "It doesn't matter," I said, "I never noticed any style at all in your story of the thermosaurus." He smiled gratefully, and passed his hand over his face; a far-away expression came into his eyes, and he slowly began, hesitating, as though talking to himself: XXII "It was high noon in the city of Antwerp. From slender steeples floated the mellow music of the Flemish bells, and in the spire of the great cathedral across the square the cracked chimes clashed discords until my ears ached. "When the fiend in the cathedral had jerked the last tuneless clang from the chimes, I removed my fingers from my ears and sat down at one of the iron tables in the court. A waiter, with his face shaved blue, brought me a bottle of Rhine wine, a tumbler of cracked ice, and a siphon. "'Does monsieur desire anything else?' he inquired. "'Yes--the head of the cathedral bell-ringer; bring it with vinegar and potatoes,' I said, bitterly. Then I began to ponder on my great-aunt and the Crimson Diamond.