"Y-yes--n-no," he answered, unsteadily. He would have said yes unreservedly a short time ago; but within the last few days he had been less sure of himself, and now, being confronted with the question unexpectedly, he found that he must answer with a reservation--though he could not at all have given a reason for the feeling that he must do so. "Perhaps it is not my way to look at life brightly," he added. "It is her way," said the professor. "She believes in everything in a persistent, childish fashion that is touching to older persons like myself. If you contest her points of belief with her she is simply obstinate. You can't move her." "Why should any one try?" said Tredennis, warmly. "There is no need to try," responded the professor. "She will find out for herself." "Why should she?" said Tredennis, warmer still. "I hope she won't." The professor took off his spectacles and began to polish them carefully with a corner of his large white handkerchief. "She is going to be a clever woman," he said. "For her sake I am sorry to see it. She is going to be the kind of clever woman who has nine chances out of ten of being a desperate pain to herself while she is a pleasure to her friends. She hasn't the nature to find safety in cleverness. She has a conscience and emotions, and they will go against her." "Against her?" cried Tredennis. "She will make mistakes and suffer for them--instead of letting others suffer. She won't be a saint, but she might be a martyr. It always struck me that it took faults and follies to make a martyr." He bent forward and poked the fire as carefully as he had rubbed his spectacles; then he turned to Tredennis again--slowly this time, instead of suddenly. "You resent it all, I suppose," he said. "Of course you do. It makes you angry, I've no doubt. It would have made me angry, I dare say, at your age, to hear an elderly scientist dissect a pretty young creature and take the bloom off her life for her. It's natural." "I don't like to think of her as--as being anything but happy--and--and good," said Tredennis, with some secret resentment. "She'll not be bad," said the professor, critically. "It isn't in her. She might be happy, perhaps--if one thing happened to her." "What one thing?" asked Tredennis. "_If_ she married a fine fellow, whom she was deeply and passionately in love with--which happens to very few women." In the shadow of his corner Tredennis felt the hot blood mount steadily to his forehead, and was glad of the dim light, for the professor was still regarding him fixedly, though as if in abstraction. "She will be--likely to marry the man she loves, sir," he said, in a voice neither clear nor steady. "Yes," said the professor; "unless she makes the mistake of merely marrying the man who loves _her_. She will meet him often enough. And, if he chances some day to be a fascinating fellow, her fate will be sealed. That goes along with the rest of her strengths and weaknesses."