"Not at all, not at all. I have already received several replies, but it is far more satisfactory to have a personal interview," returned the spinster, staring very hard at Norah's hat, and craning her neck to see how the bows were arranged at the back. "I am ordered to take a certain amount of outdoor exercise daily, and as my friends are not able to accompany me, I wish to meet with a lady who is interested in the same subjects as myself, and with whom I can enjoy exchange of ideas as we walk. You look rather young, but I gather from the fact of your having replied to my advertisement, that you are--" "I am very much interested. I should enjoy hearing your views, and, though I am young, I have seen a great deal of life. I have travelled more than most people, and am now alone in the world, and obliged to earn my own living." Norah had been in haste to reply, in order to avoid a more compromising statement, but now she stopped short, surprised by a flash of delight which illumined the listener's face. "Ah-h!" cried Miss Mellor, in the rapturous tone of one who has suddenly been granted a long-craved-for opportunity. "Then you have had experience! You _know_! You _fed_! You agree with me that the history of the human race, the throng of events, the multifarious forms of human life are only the accidental form of the Idea; they do not belong to the Idea itself, in which alone lies the adequate objectivity of the Will, but only to that phenomenon which appears to the knowledge of the individual, and which is just as foreign and unessential to the Idea itself as the figures which they assume are to the clouds, or the foam flakes to the brooks! So true! So deeply true! You agree with me, I feel sure!" "Certainly. Quite so. I mean to say--naturally! Oh, yes. By all means!" gasped Norah weakly, and her head fell back against the chair. She was not to know that the speaker had discovered her little speech in a book only one short half-hour before, and had learned it off by heart in the fond hope of being able to introduce it incidentally into conversation, and she felt faint and dizzy with the effort of trying to understand. Miss Mellor saw that she had made an impression, and beamed with complacent delight. "Ah, yes; I see that we are at one!" she cried. "And is it not a comfort to feel that, having once grasped this idea, we shall now be able to distinguish between the Will and the Idea, and between the Idea and its manifestation? The events of the world will now have significance for us, inasfar only as they are the letters out of which we may read the Idea of man. We can never again believe with the vulgar--" "Oh, my goodness!" cried Norah to herself. "To think that it should have come to this! I'm vulgar! I must be; and I never knew it! I don't understand one _word_ she is saying. If I ever get out of this room alive--"