Her well-bred if anxious whisper was covered by the voice of professor Moorsom discoursing subtly down the short length of the dinner table on the Impermanency of the Measurable to his venerable disciple. It might have been a chapter in a new and popular book of Moorsomian philosophy. Patriarchal and delighted, old Dunster leaned forward a little, his eyes shining youthfully, two spots of colour at the roots of his white beard; and Renouard, glancing at the senile excitement, recalled the words heard on those subtle lips, adopted their scorn for his own, saw their truth before this man ready to be amused by the side of the grave. Yes! Intellectual debauchery in the froth of existence! Froth and fraud! On the same side of the table Miss Moorsom never once looked towards her father, all her grace as if frozen, her red lips compressed, the faintest rosiness under her dazzling complexion, her black eyes burning motionless, and the very coppery gleams of light lying still on the waves and undulation of her hair. Renouard fancied himself overturning the table, smashing crystal and china, treading fruit and flowers under foot, seizing her in his arms, carrying her off in a tumult of shrieks from all these people, a silent frightened mortal, into some profound retreat as in the age of Cavern men. Suddenly everybody got up, and he hastened to rise too, finding himself out of breath and quite unsteady on his feet. On the terrace the philosopher, after lighting a cigar, slipped his hand condescendingly under his “dear young friend’s” arm. Renouard regarded him now with the profoundest mistrust. But the great man seemed really to have a liking for his young friend—one of those mysterious sympathies, disregarding the differences of age and position, which in this case might have been explained by the failure of philosophy to meet a very real worry of a practical kind. After a turn or two and some casual talk the professor said suddenly: “My late son was in your school—do you know? I can imagine that had he lived and you had ever met you would have understood each other. He too was inclined to action.” He sighed, then, shaking off the mournful thought and with a nod at the dusky part of the terrace where the dress of his daughter made a luminous stain: “I really wish you would drop in that quarter a few sensible, discouraging words.” Renouard disengaged himself from that most perfidious of men under the pretence of astonishment, and stepping back a pace— “Surely you are making fun of me, Professor Moorsom,” he said with a low laugh, which was really a sound of rage. “My dear young friend! It’s no subject for jokes, to me. . . You don’t seem to have any notion of your prestige,” he added, walking away towards the chairs. “Humbug!” thought Renouard, standing still and looking after him. “And yet! And yet! What if it were true?”