of bright brown jelly with waving petals of white and rose colour.

While I looked, thinking only of the curve of Helen's lips and the dancing
light in her eyes, and the glowing colour of her soft flesh, Prof.
Darmstetter's thin, high-pitched voice grated almost at my ear.

"T'at is _Actinia_--sea anemone."

"I come from the West; I have never seen the sea forms living," I answered
with an effort, fearing that he meant to show me about the laboratory.

"It is fery goot sea anemone; fery strong, fery perfect; a goot organism."

He bent over the jar, rubbing his hands. His parchment face crackled with
an almost tender complacency. For a full minute he seemed to gloat over
the flower-like animal.

"Very pretty," I said, carelessly.

"Fery pretty, you call it? T'e prettiness is t'e sign of t'e gootness, t'e
strengt', t'e perfection. You know t'at?"

To his challenging question, in which I saw the manner of a teacher with
his pupils, I replied:

"In your estimation goodness and beauty go together?"

"T'ey are t'e same; how not? See t'is way."

He shook his lean, reproving forefinger at a shapeless, melting mass that