shunned the public notoriety which the organs of popular intelligence
would otherwise confer upon him.

The Interviewer had attempted the riddle of the Sphinx, and had failed to
get the first hint of its solution.

The many tongues of the village and its visitors could not remain idle.
The whole subject of antipathies had been talked over, and the various
cases recorded had become more or less familiar to the conversational
circles which met every evening in the different centres of social life.
The prevalent hypothesis for the moment was that Maurice had a congenital
aversion to some color, the effects of which upon him were so painful or
disagreeable that he habitually avoided exposure to it. It was known,
and it has already been mentioned, that such cases were on record. There
had been a great deal of discussion, of late, with reference to a fact
long known to a few individuals, but only recently made a matter of
careful scientific observation and brought to the notice of the public.
This was the now well-known phenomenon of color-blindness. It did not
seem very strange that if one person in every score or two could not tell
red from green there might be other curious individual peculiarities
relating to color. A case has already been referred to where the subject
of observation fainted at the sight of any red object. What if this were
the trouble with Maurice Kirkwood? It will be seen at once how such a
congenital antipathy would tend to isolate the person who was its
unfortunate victim. It was an hypothesis not difficult to test, but it
was a rather delicate business to be experimenting on an inoffensive
stranger. Miss Vincent was thinking it over, but said nothing, even to
Euthymia, of any projects she might entertain.

XII

MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.

The young lady whom we have known as The Terror, as Lurida, as Miss
Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, had been reading various
works selected for her by Dr. Butts,--works chiefly relating to the
nervous system and its different affections. She thought it was about
time to talk over the general subject of the medical profession with her
new teacher,--if such a self-directing person as Lurida could be said to
recognize anybody as teacher.

She began at the beginning. "What is the first book you would put in a
student's hands, doctor?" she said to him one day. They were in his
study, and Lurida had just brought back a thick volume on I