"Are you a Margaret?" he said. "You look like one. It is partly because the name is so beautiful that one resents that senseless 'Maggie.'" Mona was just going to say that with her it was only an unused second name; but his face had grown very grave again, and she did not wish to jar on his mood. How little we can tell in life what actions or omissions will throw their light or shadow over our whole future! "What right have we," he said musingly at last, "to say what is normal and what is not? How can we presume to make one ideal of virtue the standard for all? Look round the world boldly--not through the medium of tinted glass--and choose at random a dozen types. If there be a God at all, it is awful to think of His catholicity!" Mona looked up with a smile. "Forgive me, Miss Maclean," he said. "I have no right to talk like that." "Why not? Is life never to be relieved by a strong picturesque statement? It takes a lot of conflicting utterances to make up a man's _Credo_. When I want neat, little, compatible sentences, I resort to my cookery-book. Did you think," she added mischievously, "that I would place you on a pedestal with Ruskin and my Bible, and judge you by an isolated quotation?" He laughed, and then grew suddenly grave. "Talking," he said, "is _mein Verderben_. That is why I have chosen a profession that will give me no scope for it--not that I seem likely to make much of the profession, now that it is chosen! You see--my circumstances have been peculiar, and my education has been different in some respects from that of most men." He hesitated, and then, without a word of introduction, urged by some irresistible impulse, he plunged into the story of his life. Perhaps he was anxious to see how it looked in the eyes of a capable woman; certainly he regarded Mona as a wholly exceptional being, in his intercourse with whom he was bound by no ordinary rules. "I left school when I was sixteen," he said, "laden with prizes and medals and all that sort of thing. It was my misfortune, not my fault, that I had a good deal of money to spend on my education, and a free hand as to the spending of it. I am inclined sometimes to envy fellows whose parents leave them no voice in the matter at all. "I went first to Edinburgh University for three years, and took my M.A. There are worse degrees in the world than an Edinburgh M.A. It means no culture, no University life, no rubbing up against one's fellow-men; but it does mean a solid foundation of all-round, useful information, which no man need despise, and which is not heavy enough to extinguish the slumbering fires of genius should they chance to lie beneath. Of course, it is impossible to tell _a priori_ what will prove an _education_ to any man.