o her distress, he said
quietly, "Then there is no hope for me?"

Her face retained its look of pain.

"Not ever? You could never--?" His cough shook him.

"If there had been no other," she murmured, and her eyes drooped
half-apologetically towards the necklace.

The bitterness of death was in his soul. He had a sudden ironic sense
of a gap in his mathematical philosophy. He had fathomed the secret of
Being, had analyzed and unified all things from everlasting to
everlasting, yet here was an isolated force--a woman's will--that
stood obstinately between him and happiness. He seemed to visualize
it, behind her serious face, perversely mocking.

The handle of the door turned, and a young man came in. He was in the
pink of fashion--a mantle of Venetian silk disposed in graceful folds
about his handsome person, his neckcloth of Flanders lace, his
knee-breeches of satin, his shoes gold-buckled, his dagger jewelled.
Energy flashed from his eye, vigor radiated from his every movement.

"Ah, Diedrich!" she cried, as her face lit up with more than relief.
"Here is Heer Spinoza at last. This is Heer Kerkkrinck!"

"Spinoza!" A thrill of awe was in the young man's voice, the reverence
of the consciously stupid for the great brains of the earth. He did
not take Spinoza's outstretched hand in his but put it to his lips.

The lonely thinker and the happy lover stood thus for an instant,
envying and admiring each other. Then Spinoza said cordially, "And now
that I have had the pleasure of meeting Heer Kerkkrinck I must hurry
back to town ere the road grows too dark."

"But father expects thee to sup with us," murmured Klaartje.

"'Tis a moonless night, and footpads may mistake me for a Jew." He
smiled. "Make my apologies to the doctor."

It was indeed a moonless night, but he did not make for the highroad.
Instinctively he turned seawards.

A slight mist brooded over the face of all things, adding to the
night, blurring the village to a few gleams of fire. On the broad
sandy beach he could just see the outlines of the boats and the
fishing-nets. He leaned against the gunwale of a _pink_, inhaling the
scents of tar and brine, and watching the apparent movement seawards
of some dark sailing-vessel which, despite the great red anchor at his
feet, seemed to sail outwards as each wave came in.

The sea stretched away, soundless, moveless, and dark, save where it
broke in white foam at his feet; near the horizon a pitch-black