love with, and will be always, I
think."

"And the other young lady, Lester--because, of course, she is a lady, I
mean in our sense of the word, much misunderstood as it is in these
days?"

"She is Brenda van Huysman, sir."

"Oh, the Professor's daughter.--I mean the other Professor's daughter. A
very good family. Her father is a distinguished man, and, if I remember
rightly, a Van Huysman was one of the first colonisers of New England
about four hundred years ago. It is the same family, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir; I can vouch for that."

Nitocris had given him the whole history of the family, and so he was
sure of his facts.

"Lester, I congratulate you," replied his father, taking his arm, as
they were accustomed to. "While you have been away digging among those
Egyptian tombs and temples, this girl has refused at least three
coronets, and one had strawberry leaves on it; so she loves you for
yourself. That is good, other things being equal, as I think they will
be in this case. Now, we will go to breakfast, and you shall tell me the
whole story. I have not heard a real love story for a good many years."

CHAPTER XIV

"SUPPOSED IMPOSSIBILITIES"

It was only to be expected that the announcement of a lecture with such
an alluring title by such a distinguished scholar and scientist as
Professor Franklin Marmion should fill the theatre of the Royal Society,
as the reporters said tritely but truly, "to its utmost capacity."

The mere words, "An Examination of Some Supposed Mathematical
Impossibilities," were just so many bomb-shells tossed into the middle
of the scientific arena. The circle-squarers, the triangle-trisectors,
the cube-doublers, the flat-worlders, and all the other would-be workers
of miracles plainly impossible in a world of three dimensions
jumped--not incorrectly--to the conclusion that their favourite
impossibility would be selected for examination, and, perhaps--blissful
thought!--demonstration by one of the foremost thinkers of the day, to
the lasting confusion of the scoffers. Learned pundits of the old
school, who were firmly convinced that Mathematics had long ago said
their last word, and that to talk about "supposed impossibilities" was
blasphemy of the rankest sort, came with note-books and a grim
determination to explode Franklin Marmion's heresies for good and all.
Dreamers of Fourth Dimensional dreams came hoping against hope, for the
Professor was known to be something of a