parasitic halo which every man derived from the glorifying of his own
nativity. To this primary mistake could be traced his intensely personal
philosophy. Slowly but surely there had dried up in his heart the wish
to be his brother.'"

He stopped reading suddenly.

"I see him coming in," he said.

The next minute the door opened, and Hilary entered.

"She has not come," said Mr. Stone; and Bianca murmured:

"We miss her!"

"Her eyes," said Mr. Stone, "have a peculiar look; they help me to see
into the future. I have noticed the same look in the eyes of female
dogs."

With a little laugh, Bianca murmured again:

"That is good!"

"There is one virtue in dogs," said Hilary, "which human beings
lack--they are incapable of mockery."

But Bianca's lips, parted, indrawn, seemed saying: 'You ask too much! I
no longer attract you. Am I to sympathise in the attraction this common
little girl has for you?'

Mr. Stone's gaze was fixed intently on the wall.

"The dog," he said, "has lost much of its primordial character."

And, moving to his desk, he took up his quill pen.

Hilary and Bianca made no sound, nor did they look at one another;
and in this silence, so much more full of meaning than any talk, the
scratching of the quill went on. Mr. Stone put it down at last, and,
seeing two persons in the room, read:

"'Looking back at those days when the doctrine of evolution had reached
its pinnacle, one sees how the human mind, by its habit of continual
crystallisations, had destroyed all the meaning of the process. Witness,
for example, that sterile phenomenon, the pagoda of 'caste'! Like this
Chinese building, so was Society then formed. Men were living there in
layers, as divided from each other, class from class---'" He took up the
quill, and again began to write.

"You understand, I suppose," said Hilary in a low voice, "that she has
been told not to come?"

Bianca moved her shoulders.

With a most unwonted look of anger, he added:

"Is it within the scope of your generosity to credit me with the desire
to meet your wishes?"

Bianca's answer was a laugh so strangely hard, so cruelly bitter, that
Hilary involuntarily turned, as though to retrieve the sound before it
reached the old man's ears.

Mr. Stone had laid down his pen. "I shall write no more to-day," he
said; "I have lost my feeling--I am not myself." He spoke in a voice
unlike his own.

Very tired and worn his old figure looked; as some lea