John scratched a somewhat puzzled head. How could he explain to her that of which he himself was not quite certain? In the normal case the phenomenon of manhood or womanhood, apart from the physical side,--allowing for the moment that the physical side can be set apart,--is a matter of a wider experience of life, of a million observations unconsciously correlated by a fully developed brain. It implies a differentiation between the facts and fancies of existence. The adult of twenty-one who takes seriously the make-believe of the dolls' house, and, sticking a paper crown on her head, asks you to recognize her as a queen, is merely an imbecile. The sane adult plays at mock tea-parties and crowns itself monarch in obedience to a different set of impulses altogether, either through sheer gaiety of heart, frankly making unto itself no illusions, or using make-believe as a symbol of the highest expression of life--videlicet, art--of which the human mind is capable. And, although we know very well that there are adults, many of advanced years, whom circumstances have so perverted that the Alpha and Omega of their lives is the pursuit either of a little ball or of a verminous animal over the surface of God's arresting earth, or else, it may be, a series of conjectures as to the comparative velocities of unimportant quadrupeds, yet none of them (at loose on society) would have the lunacy or the depravity to maintain that such pursuit or conjecture is a vital element in the scheme of existence. Even these who appear still to dwell in the play-world of the child have the essential faculty of discrimination. They have, in dull intervals between round or ride, encountered sorrow and pain and passion and wickedness and fierce struggle and despair. To them the sordid tragedies of criminal courts, the bestial poverty of slums, are commonplaces of knowledge. Any one of them can reel off a dozen instances of the treachery of false friends, the faithlessness of women, the corruption of commercial or political life. To them are also revealed splendours of heroism and self-sacrifice. They have a million data whence to deduce a serviceable philosophy. They are beyond all question grown up. But what wider experience of life had Stellamaris gained in the four years between the ages of sixteen and twenty? What fresh facts of existence had been presented to her for observation and correlation? What data had she for that deduction of a philosophy which marks the adult? Neither harm nor spell nor charm had come the lovely lady any nearer during the last four years than during those of her childhood. The Unwritten Law had prevailed as strong as ever. The routine of the sea-chamber had remained unchanged. Her reading, jealously selected, had brought her no closer to the sad core of many human things. The gulls and the waves and the golden sunset clouds were still her high companions. What did people mean when they said she had