stood.

"There SEEM to be four, . ." he then observed placidly--"But I
would not swear to it,--nor to anything else of which the
actuality is only supported by the testimony of my own eyes and
sense of touch."

"Good heavens, man!" cried Theos, in amazement,--"But a moment
since, you were praising the excellence of Reason, and the
progressive system of learning that was to educate human beings
into a contempt for the Supernatural and Spiritual, and yet almost
in the same breath you tell me you cannot rely on the evidence of
your own senses! Was there ever anything more utterly incoherent
and irrational!"

And he flung the pebbles into the redly flowing river with a
gesture of irritation and impatience. The scientist,--if scientist
he could be called,--gazed at him abstractedly, and stroked his
well-shaven chin with a somewhat dejected air. Presently heaving a
deep sigh, he said:

"Alas, I have again betrayed myself! ... 'tis my fatal destiny!
Always, by some unlooked-for mischance, I am compelled to avow
what most I desire to conceal! Can you not understand, sir,"--and
he laid his hand persuasively on Theos's arm,--"that a Theory may
be one thing and one's own private opinion another? My Theory is
my profession,--I live by it! Suppose I resigned it,--well, then I
should also have to resign my present position in the Royal
Institutional College,--my house, my servants, and my income. I
advance the interests of pure Human Reason, because the Age has a