with the larger outlook of his Christian fellow-pupils to
complete his emancipation from his native environment. After the dead
controversies of Hillel and Shammai in old Jerusalem, how freshening
these live discussions as to whether Holland should have sheltered
Charles Stuart from the regicide Cromwell, or whether the
_doelen-stuk_ of Rembrandt van Rijn were as well painted as Van
Ravosteyn's. In the Jewish quarter, though Rembrandt lived in it,
interest had been limited to the guldens earned by dirty old men in
sitting to him. What ardor, too, for the newest science, what worship
of Descartes and deprecation of the philosophers before him! And then
the flavor of romance--as of their own spices--wafted from the talk
about the new Colonies in the Indies! Good God! had it been so wise to
quench the glow of youth, to slip so silently to forty year? He had
allowed her to drop out of his life--this child so early grown to
winning womanhood--she was apparently dead for him, yet this sudden
idea of her proximity had revitalized her so triumphantly that the
philosopher wondered at the miracle, or at his own powers of
self-deception.

And who was this young man?

Had he analyzed love correctly? He turned to Proposition xxxiii. "If
we love a thing which is like ourselves we endeavor as much as
possible to make it love us in return." His eye ran over the proof
with its impressive summing-up. "Or in other words (Schol. Prop,
xiii., pt. 3), we try to make it love us in return." Unimpeachable
logic, but was it true? Had he tried to make Klaartje love him in
return? Not unless one counted the semi-conscious advances of
wit-combats and intellectual confidences as she grew up! But had he
succeeded? No, impossible, and his spirits fell, and mounted again to
note how truly their falling corroborated--by converse reasoning--his
next Proposition. "The greater the affect with which we imagine that a
beloved object is affected towards us, the greater will be our
self-exaltation," No, she had never given him cause for
self-exaltation, though occasionally it seemed as if she preferred his
talk to that of even the high-born, foppish youths sent by their sires
to sit at her father's feet.

In any case perhaps it was well he had given her maidenly modesty no
chance of confession. Marriage had never loomed as a possibility for
him--the life of the thinker must needs shrink from the complications
and prejudices engendered by domestic happines