seeking it, since he has been permitted to see Korinna's
soul. And if he follows a competent guide he will see her again."

"But why? What good will it do him?" asked Melissa, with a reproachful
and anxious look at the man whose influence, as she divined would be
pernicious to her brother, in spite of his knowledge. The Magian gave a
compassionate shrug, and in the look he cast at the philosopher, the
question was legible, "What have such as these to do with the highest
things?"

Philip nodded in impatient assent, and, without paying any further heed
to his brother and sister, besought his friend to give him the proofs of
the theory that the physical causation of things is weaker than the
sympathy which connects them. Melissa knew full well that any attempt now
to separate Philip from Serapion would be futile; however, she would not
leave the last chance untried, and asked him gravely whether he had
forgotten his mother's tomb.

He hastily assured her that he fully intended to visit it presently.
Fruit and fragrant oil could be had here at any hour of the night.

"And your two wreaths?" she said, in mild reproach, for she had observed
them both below the portrait of Korinna.

"I had another use for them," he said, evasively; and then he added,
apologetically: "You have brought flowers enough, I know. If I can find
time, I will go to-morrow to see my father." He nodded to them both,
turned to the Magian, and went on eagerly:

"Then that magical sympathy--"

They did not wait to hear the discussion; Alexander signed to his sister
to follow him.

He, too, knew that his brother's ear was deaf now to anything he could
say. What Serapion had said had riveted even his attention, and the
question whether it might indeed be vouchsafed to living mortals to see
the souls of the departed, and hear their voices, exercised his mind so
greatly that he could not forbear asking his sister's opinion on such
matters.

But Melissa's good sense had felt that there was something not quite
sound in the Magian's argument--nor did she conceal her conviction that
Philip, who was always hard to convince, had accepted Serapion's views,
not because he yielded to the weight of his reasons, but because he--and
Alexander, too, for that matter--hoped by his mediation to see the
beautiful Korinna again.

This the artist admitted; but when he jested of the danger of a jealous
quarrel between him and his brother, for the sake of a dead girl, t