"I don't see why I shouldn't have a wife as well as another," says
the professor, idly tapping his forefinger on the table near him.
"She would bore me. But a great many fellows are bored."

"You have grasped one great truth if you never grasp another!" says
Mr. Hardinge, who has now recovered. "Catch _me_ marrying."

"It's unlucky to talk like that," says the professor. "It looks as
though your time were near. In Sophocles' time there was a man
who----"

"Oh, bother Sophocles, you know I never let you talk anything but
wholesome nonsense when I drop in for a smoke with you," says the
younger man. "You began very well, with that superstition of yours,
but I won't have it spoiled by erudition. Tell me about your ward."

"Would that be nonsense?" says the professor, with a faint smile.

They are sitting in the professor's room with the windows thrown
wide open to let in any chance gust of air that Heaven in its mercy
may send them. It is night, and very late at night too--the clock
indeed is on the stroke of twelve. It seems a long, long time to the
professor since the afternoon--the afternoon of this very day--when
he had seen Perpetua sitting in that open carriage. He had only been
half glad when Harold Hardinge--a young man, and yet, strange to
say, his most intimate friend--had dropped in to smoke a pipe with
him. Hardinge was fonder of the professor than he knew, and was
drawn to him by curious intricate webs. The professor suited him,
and he suited the professor, though in truth Hardinge was nothing
more than a gay young society man, with just the average amount of