diagnosed it," she flashed back at him.

He looked down at her diminutive figure with its well-shaped, patrician head, its sensitive mouth, its wide-set, shining eyes.

"Star-shine," he smiled.

She poked him with a sharp "What?"

"You don't think I ought to—to—kiss you, possibly, do you?"

"Mercy, no!"

"Good! I was afraid you might expect something of me."

"Oh, no. Think what you have done for the girl," she quoted, and he heard her laugh down the hall and out into the garden. He took a step as if to follow her. Then, with a shake of his shoulders, he climbed the stairs to his new workshop with a smile on his lips.

III

The Professor was working in his garden. It was one of his few relaxations, and he took it as seriously as a problem. He had great success with flowers, owing to what he called his system. He was methodical as a machine in everything he did, so the plants were fed with the regularity of hospital patients, and flourished accordingly. To-day he was in pursuit of slugs. He followed up one row, and down the next, slaying with the ruthlessness of fate.

The general effect of his garden was rather striking. He laid out each bed in the shape of an arithmetical figure. The pansy beds were in figure eights, the nasturtiums were pruned and ordered into stubby figure ones, while the asters and fall flowers ranged from fours to twenties.

The Professor carried his arithmetical sense to extremes. He insisted that figures had personality, just as people have, and it was a favourite method of his to nickname his friends and pupils according to a numeral. He was watching the death-throes of a slug, with scientific indifference, as his son-in-law approached him, carrying a wide-brimmed hat.

"Professor Parkhurst, your daughter desires you to put on your hat. You forgot it."

"Oh, yes. Thank you!"

"I should like the opportunity of a few words with you, sir, if you can spare the time."

"Well, I cannot. My time is very precious. If you desire to walk along with me while I destroy these slugs, I will listen to what you say."

He pursued his course, and Jarvis, perforce, followed.

"I have been in your house for a week, now, Professor Parkhurst, and I have merely encountered you at meals."

"Often enough," said the Professor, making a sudden turn that almost upset Jarvis. "I go fifty steps up, and fifty steps back," he explained, and Jarvis stared at him open-mouthed.

"You count your steps?" he repeated.

"Certainly, no matter what I do, I count. When I eat, when I sleep, walk, talk, think, I always count."

"How awful! A human metronome. I must make a note of that." And Jarvis took out a notebook to make an entry.

"You have the notebook habit?" snorted the Professor.

"Yes, I can't afford to waste ideas, suggestions, thoughts."

"Bah! A most offensive habit."

"I gather, from your general attitude," Jarvis began again, "that you dislike me."

"I neither like nor dislike you. I don't know you."

"You never will know me, at this rate."

"I am not sure that I care to."

"Why not? What have you against me?"

"You are not practical."

"Do you consider yourself practical?"

"I do. I am the acme of practical. I am mathematical."

He slew another bug.

"How can you do that?" cried Jarvis, his concern in his face. "That slug has a right to life. Why don't you get the point of view of the slug?"

"He kills my roses," justified the Professor. "He's a murderer. Society has a right to extinguish him."

"The old fallacy, a tooth for a tooth?"

"You'd sacrifice my roses to save this insect?"

"I'd teach the rose to take care of itself."

"You're crazy," he snapped, and walked on, Jarvis at his heels.

"I didn't come to quarrel with you about our views of gardening, or of life. I realize that we have no common ground. You are of the Past, and I am of the Future."

"There is nobody more modern than I am!" cried the Professor.

"Rubbish! No modern wastes his life in rows of inanimate numerals. We get out and work at humanity and its problems."

"What are the problems of humanity?"

"Food, employment, education, health."

"All of them mathematical. Economics is mathematical."

"Well, I wish instead of teaching a few thousand students higher algebra that you had taught your own daughter a little common sense."

"Common sense is not taught. It is a gift of the gods, like genius," said the Professor.

Jarvis glanced at him quickly, and took out the notebook.

"Put that thing away!" shouted the Professor. "I will not be annotated."

Jarvis meekly returned it to his pocket, but as the Professor right-about faced, he exploded:

"For heaven's sake, sit down and listen to me! This mathematical progression makes me crazy."

"I have just so many rows to do," the Professor replied, as he marched along. "Do I understand you to criticise my daughter's education?"

"I don't know anything about her education. I didn't know she had one," said Jarvis, "but this whim of hers, in marrying me, is very trying to me. It is most upsetting."

"Have it annulled. It can't possibly be legal."

"She won't hear of it. She desires to be married to me."

The Professor rose and faced him.

"Then you may as well resign yourself. I have lived with her nineteen years and I know."

"But it is absurd that a child like that should always have her own way. You have spoiled her."

Even the Professor's bent back showed pity.

"You have a great deal to learn, young man."

"Can't you persuade her to divorce me?"

"I cannot. I tried to persuade her to do that before she married you."

"I suppose you think I ought to make a living for her?"

"At the risk of being called a back number, I do."

"Just when I am beginning to count."

"Count? Count what?"

"Count as a creative artist."

"Just what is it you do, Jocelyn?"

"I try to express the Philosophy of Modernism through the medium of the Drama."

"Who buys it?"

"Nobody."

"How are you beginning to count, then?"

"Oh, not in the market-place. In my own soul."

"Forty-nine, fifty," said the Professor. "Turn here. In your own soul, you say?" He glanced at the youth beside him. "Bambi has sold her birthright for a mess of pottage," he muttered.

"That's just the question. Whose duty is it to provide the pottage?"

"Maybe you think it's mine?"

"Why shouldn't Science support Art?"

"Humph! Why not let Bambi support you? She says she wants to."

"I am willing she should support herself, but not me."

"So the only question is, will I support you?"

"Exactly. With Bambi off your hands, you will have no other responsibility, and you could not do a bigger thing for the world than to help me to instruct and inspire it."

"Aristophanes!" exclaimed the Professor. "You are unique! You are number twenty-three."

"Why twenty-three?"

"Because that is neither much nor little."

"Your daughter thinks my plays will sell, but I tell you frankly I doubt it."

"How can you instruct and inspire if nobody listens?"

"They must listen in the end, else why am I here?"

The Professor relinquished his chase, to stare again. "You are at least sincere in your belief in yourself—twenty-three. I'd like to hear some of these great ideas of yours."

"Very well. I am going to read a play to your daughter this evening. If you care to come, you may listen. Then you will see that it would pay you to stake me for a couple of years."

"I'll come and listen."

"If you decide to undertake me, I insist that you shall not continue this scornful avoidance of me. If we three are to live together, we must live in harmony, which is necessary to my work."

"Whose favour is this, yours or mine?"