"Oh how interesting" she said insincerely when she had read Great Thoughts from Great Lives on the cover.... I ought to have said I don't like extracts. "Lives of great men all remind us. We can make our lives sublime," she read aloud under her breath from the first page.... I ought to go. I can't enter into this.... I hate 'great men' I think.... "That book has been a treasure-house to me--for many years. I know it now almost by heart. If it interests you, you will allow me I hope to present it to you." "Oh you must not let me deprive you of it--oh _no_. It is very kind of you; but you really mustn't." She looked up and returned quickly to the fascinating pages. Sentences shone out striking at her heart and brain ... names in italics; Marcus Aurelius ... Lao-Tse. Confucius ... Clement of Alexandria ... Jacob Boehme. "It's full of the most fascinating things. Oh no; I couldn't think of taking it. You must keep it. Who is Jacob Boehme? That name always _fascinates_ me. I must have read something, somewhere, a long time ago. I can't remember. But it is such a _wonderful_ name." "Jacob Boehme was a German visionary. You will find of course all shades of opinion there." "All contradicting each other; that's the worst of it. Still, I suppose all roads lead to Rome." "I see you have thought a great deal." "Well" said Miriam feverishly, "there's always _science_, always all that awful business of science, and no getting rid of it." "I think--in that matter--one must not allow one's mind to be led away?" "But one must keep an _open_ mind." "Are you familiar with Professor Tyndall?" "Only by meeting him in books about Huxley." "Ah--he was very different; very different." "Huxley" said Miriam with intense bitterness "was an egoistic _adolescent_--all his life. I _never_ came across _anything_ like his conceited complacency in my life. The very look of his side-whiskers,--well, there you have the whole man." Her heart burned and ached, beating out the words. She rose to go holding the volume in hands that shook to the beating of her heart. Far away in the bitter mist of the darkening room was the strange little figure. "Let me just write your name in the book." "Oh, well, really, it is too bad--thank you very much." He carried the book to the window-sill and stood writing his bent head very dark and round in the feeble grey light. Happy monk alone up under the roof with his Plato. It was a _shame_. CHAPTER XXXIII 1 "What a _huge_ room?" "Isn't it a big room. Come in young lady."