"It is not the first disappointment of my life," he said, "but it is the greatest." Algarcife was looking through the open window to the sunlight falling upon the waving grass. A large butterfly, with black and yellow wings, was dancing above a clump of dandelions. "I am sorry," he said, more gently--"sorry for that--but it can't be helped. I am not a theologian, but a scientist; I am not a believer, but an agnostic; I am not a priest, but a man." "But you are young. The pendulum may swing back--" "Never," said Algarcife--"never." He lifted his head, looking into the other's eyes. "Don't you see that when a man has once conceived the magnitude of the universe he can never bow his head to a creed? Don't you see that when he has grasped the essential verity in all religions he no longer allies himself to a single one? Don't you see that when he has realized the dominance of law in religions--the law of their growth and decay, of their evolution and dissolution, when he has once grasped the fact that man creates, and is not created by, his god--don't you see that he can never bind himself to the old beliefs?" "I see that he can awake to the knowledge of the spiritual life as well as to the physical--that he can grasp the existence of a vital ethical principle in nature. I shall pray for you, and I shall hope--" Algarcife frowned. "I am sick of it," he said--"sick to death. To please you, I plodded away at theology for three solid years. To please you, I weighed assumptions as light as air. To please you, I read all the rot of all the Fathers--and I am sick of it. I shall live my own life in my own way." "And may God help you!" said the elder man; and then, "Where will you go?" "To Egypt--to India--to the old civilizations." "And then?" "I do not know. I shall work and I shall succeed--with or without the help of God." And he had gone. During the next few years he travelled in Africa and Asia, when the sudden loss of his income recalled him to America. Finding it fruitless to rebel, he resigned himself philosophically, secured a position as instructor in a woman's college, made up an annual deficit by writing for the scientific reviews, and continued his studies. His physical nature he believed he had rendered quiescent. Some days after his encounter with Mariana he came upon her again. He had just entered the park at the Seventy-second Street entrance, on his way from his lecture at the Bodley College. The battered bonnet of a beggar-woman had blown beneath the horses' hoofs in the drive, and he had stopped to rescue it, when he heard his name called, and saw Mariana beside him. She spoke impulsively. "I have been watching you," she said. He looked at her in perplexity. "Indeed! And what have you discovered?" "I discovered that you are a gentleman." He laughed outright. "Your powers of intuition are positively miraculous," he replied. She upbraided him with a glance. "You are unkind," she said. "Am I?"