"That is the point," he said. "My fear is that it is shaken now." Tredennis stopped in the middle of the room--stood quite still. "She has had friends and admirers," said the professor, "scores of them. Perhaps all the more because she has cared less for them than they for her. She has a pretty trick of making the best of people, and it wins the public heart. She has friends, acquaintances, and even harmless devotees; but among them all there is only one man who gauges her, and that man is the one who very naturally presents himself to your mind as a fair dandy, with a ready tongue and good manners." "Arbuthnot!" exclaimed Tredennis. "Arbuthnot!" The professor smiled faintly. "What," he said, "you recognize him at once! Well, my one vanity is my pride in my private knowledge of the thought of others. I am very proud of it, in a senile way. I have been studying and classifying all my life, and now I sit and look on, and treat human beings as I have treated insects. If it had not been so, I should not have known so much of Bertha. Yes, Arbuthnot. Among all the men she knows and has known--diplomates, literati, politicians, honest men--I have found only one to disturb me, and that one Laurence Arbuthnot." Tredennis stood still, looking down at the floor, with folded arms. "I"--he began, "I have thought"-- The professor started. "What!" he exclaimed. "_You_ have thought? If you have thought--it must be plainer than I feared." "No," said Tredennis, hurriedly. "Do not let that trouble you. What I have thought is so trivial and vague that it should not weigh at all. It has only been because I remembered her girlhood, and--and I thought her changed--and did not understand."