“Anthony, my good bourgeois! I had thought you quite without that sort of tin pride. Besides, I am not giving it to you; after all it's father's to use as he likes.” “But I must give him something for it--” “Do you suppose you are giving us nothing?” she interrupted him warmly; “you have brought us your clear, beautiful spirits, absolutely without price. Why, you can make father laugh; have you any idea how rarely he did that? When you imitate Margaret absolutely I can see her fat, white stockings. And your marvellous unworldliness--” she shook her head mournfully. “I fear that this is mere calculation; surely you must know the value of your innocent charms.” Anthony stood with a lowered head, floundering mentally among his warring inclinations; when, almost with relief, he saw that she had noiselessly vanished. XLVIII HE slept uneasily, and woke abruptly to a room flooded with sunlight, and an unaccountable sense of something gone wrong. He dressed hurriedly, and had opened his door, when he heard his name called from below. It was Annot, he knew, but her voice was strange, terrified--a helpless cry new to her accustomed poise. “Anthony! Anthony!” she called from the conservatory. Rufus Hardinge, who, it was evident from his clothes had not been in bed, was standing rigidly before the row of plants upon whose flowering they had so intently waited. And, in a rapid glance, Anthony saw that they had blossomed in delicate, parti-colored petals--some pale lavender, others deep purple, still others reddish white. Annoys yellow wrap was thrown carelessly about her nightgown, her feet were bare, and her hair hung in a tangle about her blanched face. When Anthony entered she clung to his arm, and he saw that she was trembling violently. For a tense moment they were silent: the sun streamed over the mathematical plant ranks and lit the white or blue tickets tied to their stems; a bubbling chorus of birds filled the world of leaves without. “It's all wrong,” she sobbed. “So!” the biologist finally said with a wry smile; “you see that I have not solved the riddle of the universe; inheritance in pure line is not explicated.... A life of labor as void as any prostitute's; not a single fact, not a supposition warranted, not a foot advanced.”