"I see," said Miss Enistor ironically, "you have come across the line of Shakespeare which says that pity is akin to love." "I have never read Shakespeare's plays," admitted Mr. Hardwick simply. "I'm not a clever chap, you know. But you looked so forlorn in that dismal house, and seemed so starving for kind words and actions, that I wanted to take you away with me and make you happier. Yes," the artist quite brightened at his own perspicuity, "that is what drew me to you--a desire to give you a really good time." Alice looked at him gravely, but with a suspicion of a smile on her pale lips. "Do you know, Julian, that I believe you to be a good man." The artist blushed again: he had the trick of blushing on occasions, which showed him to possess still the modesty of boyhood. "Oh, I say," he murmured almost inaudibly; then to cover his confusion added: "You call me Julian." "Yes," Alice nodded her head in a stately way. "Henceforth let us be the greatest of friends." "Lovers," he urged, "true honest lovers." "No, Julian. We would be neither true nor honest as lovers. Our marriage would not be one of those made in heaven." "Are any marriages made in heaven?" he asked somewhat cynically. She looked at him in surprise. "Of course. When one soul meets another soul capable of blending with it, that is a heavenly marriage." "Well then," he cried impetuously, "my soul and your soul?" Alice shook her head. "We don't strike the same note: we are not in harmony, Julian. As friends we can esteem one another, but as lovers, as man and wife, you would end in boring me as I should finally bore you." "One would think you were fifty to hear you talk so," said Hardwick crossly. "Do you reckon knowledge by Time?" she asked, harking back to the phrase he had used earlier in the conversation. He had no reply ready. "Still it is odd to hear a girl of twenty-one talk as you do, Alice." "You are speaking of my new suit of clothes. I am as old as the world." "Oh, that is the queer stuff your father talks. He believes in reincarnation, doesn't he?" "He does, and so do I." "I wonder that you can. A sensible girl like you----" "My dear Julian, you speak without knowledge," she interrupted placidly. "That can't be knowledge which can't be proved." "I think you must be a reincarnation of Nicodemus," retorted Miss Enistor. "That is no answer." "Now how can I give you an answer, when you have not the capability of grasping the answer, Julian? If a peasant wanted a mathematical problem proved to him, he would have to learn mathematics to understand it." "Yes, I suppose so. But you mean----" "I mean that you have to live the life to understand the doctrine. Christ said that two thousand years ago, and it is as true to-day as it was then."