reams as you must have had, to be educated!
How very grateful you must be to Doctor Mach."

She heard her own words helplessly, as if in a dream, and, if the
unwisdom of this kind of conversation had impressed the mistress of
Heartholm before, now she could have bitten off her tongue with that
needless speech on it. Young Berber, however, seemed hardly to have
heard her; he stood there, the "Gargoyle" look still in his eyes, gazing
past his mistress into some surrounding mystery of air element. It was
to her, watching him, as if those brooding, dilated pupils might behold,
besides infinitesimal mystery of chemical atoms, other mysteries--colorless
pools of air where swam, like sea anemones, radiant forms of released
spirit; invisible life-trees trembling with luminous fruit of occult being!

When Berber turned this look, naked as a sword, back to Evelyn Strang,
she involuntarily shivered. But the boy's face was unconscious. His
expression changed only to the old casual regard as he said, very
simply:

"You see, I wish they had not educated me!"

The confession came with inevitable shock. If she received it with
apparent lightness, it was that she might, with all the powers a woman
understands, rise to meet what she felt was coming. The barrier down, it
was comparatively easy to stand in the breach, making her soft note of
deprecation, acknowledging playfully that the stress of so-called
"normal" life must indeed seem a burden to one who had hitherto talked
with flowers, played with shadows. Berber, however, seemed hardly to
hear her; there was no tenseness in the youth's bearing; he merely
gazed thoughtfully past her efforts, repeating:

"No--I wish they had not taught me. I have not really gained _knowledge_
by being taught."

Mrs. Strang was genuinely puzzled. Yet she understood; it was merely
_theories about life_ that he had gained. Again she called to mind a
sentence in Doctor Milton's letter: "I know that you have followed the
case in such a way as to understand what would be your responsibility
toward this _newly made_ human soul." Was it right to question Berber?
Could it be actually harmful to him to go on? And yet was it not her
only chance, after years of faithful waiting?

Trying to keep her voice steady, she reproached him:

"No? With all that being educated means, all the gift for humanity?"

The young fellow seemed not to get her meaning. He picked up the garden
fork. Thoughtfully scraping the d