"Very," responded the professor, "if it's all in the one way and not in the other." He changed the subject almost immediately, and began to discuss Tredennis' own affairs. His kindly interest in his career touched the younger man's heart. It seemed that he had taken an interest in him from the first, and, silent as he had been, had never lost sight of him. "It used to strike me that you would be likely to make something of your life," he said, in his quiet, half-abstracted way. "You looked like it. I used to say to myself that if you were my son I should look forward to being proud of you. I--I wish you _had_ been my son, my boy." "If I had been," answered Tredennis, earnestly, "I should have felt it a reason for aiming high." The professor smiled faintly. "Well," he said, "you aimed high without that incentive. And the best of it is that you have not failed. You are a strong fellow. I like--a--strong--fellow," he added, slowly. He spoke of Bertha occasionally again in the course of their after conversation, but not as it had been his habit to speak of her in her girlhood. His references to her were mostly statements of facts connected with her children, her mode of life, or her household. She lived near him, her home was an attractive one, and her children were handsome, healthy, and bright. "Amory is a bright fellow, and a handsome fellow," he said. "He is not very robust, but he is an attractive creature--sensitive, poetic temperament, fanciful. He is fanciful about Bertha, and given to admiring her." When he went away, at the end of the evening, Tredennis carried with him the old vague sense of discomfort. The professor had been interesting and conversational, and had given him the warmest of welcomes, but he had missed something from their talk which he had expected to find. He was not aware of how he had counted upon it until he missed it, and the sense of loss which he experienced was a trouble to him.