ress unless we _do_," said the Professor.

"You are always paradoxical."

"There is no paradox here. I am just as certain as I am of my own
existence, that real, solid, permanent progress is impossible to any
people until they recognise, as a mere truism, that whatever is gained
by cruelty, be it towards the humblest thing alive, is not gain, but the
worst of loss."

"Oh, you always go too far!" cried Valeria.

"I don't admit that in a horror of cruelty, it is possible to go too
far," the Professor replied. "Cruelty is the one unpardonable sin." He
passed his hand across his brow, with a weary gesture, as if the
pressure of misery and tumult and anguish in the world, were more than
he could bear.

"You won't give up your music, Hadria," Valeria said, at the end of a
long cogitation.

"It is a forlorn sort of pursuit," Hadria answered, with a whimsical
smile, "but I will do all I can." Valeria seemed relieved.

"And you will not give up hope?"

"Hope? Of what?"

"Oh, of--of----. What an absurd question!"

Hadria smiled. "It is better to face facts, I think, than to shroud them
away. After all, it is only by the rarest chance that character and
conditions happen to suit each other so well that the powers can be
developed. They are generally crushed. One more or less----." Hadria
gave a shrug.

The Professor broke in, abruptly.

"It is exactly the one more or less that sends the balance up or down,
that decides the fate of men and nations. An individual often counts
more than a generation. If that were not so, nothing would be possible,
and hope would be insane."

"Perhaps it is!" said Hadria beneath her breath.

The Professor had risen. He heard the last words, but made no
remonstrance. Yet there was a something in his expression that gave
comfort.

"I fear I shall have to be going back," he said, looking at his watch.
As he spoke, the first notes of a nightingale stole out of the
shrubbery. Voices were hushed, and the three stood listening spellbound,
to the wonderful impassioned song. Hadria marvelled at its strange
serenity, despite the passion, and speculated vaguely as to the
possibility of a paradox of the same kind in the soul of a human being.
Passion and serenity? Had not the Professor combined these apparent
contradictions?

There was ecstasy so supreme in the bird's note that it had become calm
again, like great heat that affects the senses, as with frost, or a
flooded river that runs swi