who, being a lodger in the house, taught Iris almost as soon as she
could read how letters placed side by side may be made to signify and
accomplish stupendous things, and how they may disguise the most
graceful and beautiful curves, and how they may even open a way into
boundless space, and there disclose marvels. This wondrous world did
the philosopher open to the ready and quick-witted girl; nor did he
ever lead her to believe that it was at all an unusual or an
extraordinary thing for a girl to be so quick and apt for science as
herself, nor did he tell her that if she went to Newnham or to Girton,
extraordinary glories would await her, with the acclamations of the
multitude in the Senate House and the praise of the Moderators. Iris,
therefore, was not proud of her mathematics, which seemed part of her
very nature. But of her heraldry she was, I fear, extremely
proud--proud even to sinfulness. No doubt this was the reason why,
through her heraldry, the humiliation of this evening fell upon her.

"If he is young," she thought, "if he is young--and he is sure to be
young--he will be very angry at having opened his mind to a girl"--it
will be perceived that, although she knew so much mathematics, she was
really very ignorant of the opposite sex, not to know that a young man
likes nothing so much as the opening of his mind to a young lady. "If
he is old, he will be more humiliated still"--as if any man at any age
was ever humiliated by confessing himself to a woman. "If he is a
proud man, he will never forgive me. Indeed, I am sure that he can
never forgive me, whatever kind of man he is. But I can do no more
than tell him I am sorry. If he will not forgive me then, what more
can I say? Oh, if he should be vindictive!"

When the clock began to strike the hour of eight, Iris lighted her
candles, and before the pulsation of the last stroke had died away,