helps to pass the hours, for Boreas is easily bored and finds time a terrible adversary. Gradually he understands that she is a necessity to his comfort, and there is nothing he will not do to secure her on every possible opportunity for himself. Then perhaps he allows to himself that he really does care a little, and he loses some of his incrustation of vanity. He feels less sure of himself, and his companions observe that he ceases to talk of his alleged good fortunes. Very, very slowly his real heart wakes up, and whatever is manly and serious and gentle in his nature comes unconsciously to the surface. Henceforth he knows he loves, and because his love has been slow to develop itself it is not necessarily sluggish or deficient when once it is come. But Englishmen are rarely heroic lovers except in their novels. There is generally a little bypath of caution, a postern gate of mercantile foresight, by which they can slip quietly out at the right moment and forget all about the whole thing.

Claudius was not an Englishman, but a Scandinavian, and he differed from the imaginary young man described above in that he had a great broad reverence of woman and for woman's love. But it was all a theory, of which the practice to him was as yet unknown. He had soon wearied of the class of women he had met in his student-life—chiefly the daughters of respectable Heidelberg Philistines, of various degrees of south Teutonic prettiness; and the beautiful women of the world, of whom he had caught a glimpse in his travels had never seemed real enough to him to be in any way approached. He never had realised that his own personality, combined with his faultless manners, would have soon made him a favourite in what is called society, had he chosen to court it.

After all, it was very vague this passing fancy for the dark-eyed woman of the Schloss. Perhaps Dr. Claudius watched his symptoms too narrowly, and was overmuch pleased at finding that something could still rouse a youthful thrill in him, after the sensation of old age that had of late oppressed him. A man, he said to himself, is not old so long as he can love—and be loved—well, so long as he can love, say, and let the rest take care of itself. And by and by the sun went westering down the hill, and he shook himself out of his dreams, and pocketed his book and turned homeward. His day, he thought, had not amounted to much after all, and he would spend the evening in sober study, and not dream any more until bedtime. But he would be sociable this evening and eat his supper—now he thought about it, it would be dinner and supper combined—in the company of his colleagues at their favourite haunt. And he would go 

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