"Oh!" says the professor. To him it seems very difficult to say. Is
it possible she is going to ask him to call her by that
familiar--almost affectionate--name? The girl must be mad.

"Yes--much easier," says Perpetua; "you will find that out, after a
bit, when you have got used to calling me by it. Are you going now,
Mr. Curzon? Going _so soon?_"

"I have classes," says the professor.

"Students?" says she. "You teach them? I wish I was a student. I
shouldn't have been given over to Aunt Jane then, or," with a rather
wilful laugh, "if I had been I should have led her, oh!"
rapturously, _"such a life!"_

It suggests itself to the professor that she is quite capable of
doing that now, though she is _not_ of the sex male.

"Good-bye," says he, holding out his hand.

"You will come soon again?" demands she, laying her own in it.

"Next week--perhaps."

"Not till then? I shall be dead then," says she, with a rather
mirthless laugh this time. "Do you know that you and Aunt Jane are
the only two people in all London whom I know?"

"That is terrible," says he, quite sincerely.