Miriam looked first. Jupiter was in the field. She could not suppress a momentary exclamation of astonished ecstasy at the spectacle. While she watched, Mr. Armstrong told her something about the mighty orb. He pointed out the satellites, contrasted the size of Jupiter with that of the earth, and explained to her the distances at which parts of the planet are from each other as compared with those of New Zealand and America from London. But what affected her most was to see Jupiter's solemn, still movement, and she gazed and gazed, utterly absorbed, until at last he had disappeared. The stars had passed thus before her eyes ever since she had been born, but what was so familiar had never before been emphasised or put in a frame, and consequently had never produced its due effect. Afterwards Mr. Farrow had his turn, and Mr. Armstrong then observed that they had had enough; that it was getting late, but that he hoped they would come again. They started homewards, but their teacher remained solitary till far beyond midnight at his lonely post. The hamlet lay asleep beneath him in profoundest peace. His study had a strange fascination for him. He never wrote anything about it; he never set himself up as a professional expert; he could not preach much about it; most of what he acquired was incommunicable at Marston-Cocking, or nearly so, and yet he was never weary. It was for some inexplicable reason the food and the medicine which his mind needed. It kept him in health, it pacified him, and contented him with his lot. On the following evening Miriam and her husband sat at tea. "You didn't quite understand Mr. Armstrong, Miriam?" "No, not quite." "Ah! it is not easy; it all lies in the axis not being perpendicular, and in our not being in the middle. Now look here!" He took a long string; tied one end to the curtain-rod over the window, and brought the other down to the floor. He then took Miriam, placed her underneath it in the middle with her face to the window. "Now, that is the north, and the top of the string is the pole star. Just imagine the string the axis of a great globe in which the stars are fixed, and that it goes round from your right hand to your left." But to Miriam, although she had so strong an imagination, it was unimaginable. It was odd that she could create Verona and Romeo with such intense reality, and yet that she could not perform such a simple feat as that of portraying to herself the revolution of an inclined sphere. Mr. Farrow was not disappointed.