which were marked "Strictly private." Seeing this, Virginia's appetite for truth became keener than ever. She instantly began her researches. The more she read, the more eager she became; and the more private appeared the nature of the documents, the more insatiable did her thirst for truth grow. To her extreme surprise, she gathered that the Professor had begun life as a clergyman. There were several photographs of him in his surplice; and a number of devout prayers, apparently composed by himself for his own personal use. This discovery was the result of her labours.

"Certainly," she said, "it is one of extreme significance. If Paul was a priest once, he must be a priest now. Orders are indelible-at least in the Church of England I know they are."

XV.

Paul came back, to Virginia's extreme relief, without the missing link. But he was still radiant in spite of his failure; for he had discovered, he said, a place where the creature had apparently slept, and he had collected in a card-paper box a large number of its parasites.

"I am glad," said Virginia, "that you have not found the missing link though as to thinking that we really came from monkeys, of course that is too absurd. Now if you could have brought me a nice monkey, I should really have liked that. The Bishop has promised that I shall have a darling one, if I ever reach him-ah me!-ifPaul," continued Virginia, in a very solemn voice, after a long pause, "do you know that whilst you have been away I have been pursuing truth? I rather liked it; and I found it very, very significant."

"Oh, joy!" exclaimed the Professor. "Oh, unspeakable radiance ! Oh holy, oh essentially dignified Humanity! it will very soon be perfect! Tell me, Virginia, what truths have you been discovering?" "One truth about you, Paul," said Virginia, very gravely, "and one truth about me. I burn-oh, I burn to tell them to you!"

The Professor was enraptured to hear that one half of Humanity had been studying human nature; and he began asking Virginia if her discoveries belonged to the domain of historical or biological science. Meanwhile Virginia had flung herself on her knees before him, and was exclaiming in piteous accents

"By my fault, by my own fault, by my very grievous fault, holy father, I confess to you

"Is the woman mad?" cried the Professor, starting up from his seat. "You are a priest, Paul," said Virginia; "that is one of the things I have discovered. I am in a state of deadly sin; that is the other: and I must and will confess to you. Once a priest, always a priest. You cannot get rid of your orders, and you must and shall hear me." "I was once in orders, it is true," said Paul, reluctantly; "but how did you find out my miserable secret?"

"In my zeal for truth," said Virginia, "I broke open your tin box; I read all your letters; I looked at your early photographs; I saw all your beautiful prayers."

"You broke open my box!" cried the Professor. "You read my letters and my private papers! Oh, horrible! oh, immoral! What shall we do if half Humanity has no feeling of honour?"

"Oh," said Virginia, "it was all for the love of truth-of solemn and holy truth. I sacrificed every other feeling for that. But I have not told you my truth yet; and I am determined you shall hear it, or I must still remain in my sins. Paul, I am a married woman; and I discover, in spite of that, that I have fallen in love with you. My husband, it is true, is far away; and, whatever we do, he could never possibly be the wiser. But I am in a state of mortal sin, nevertheless; and I would give anything in the world if you would only kiss me.” "Woman!" exclaimed Paul, aghast with fright and horror, "do you dare to abuse truth, by turning it to such base purposes?"

"Oh, you are so clever," Virginia went on, "and when the ends of your moustaches are waxed, you look positively handsome; and I love you so deeply and so tenderly, that I shall certainly go to hell if you do not give me absolution."

At this the Professor jumped up, and, staring very hard at Virginia, asked her if, after all that he had said on the ship, she really believed in such exploded fallacies as hell, God, and priestcraft.

She reminded him that he had preached there without a surplice, and that she had therefore not thought it right to listen to a word he said.

"Ah,” cried the Professor, with a sigh of intense relief, "I see it all now. How can Humanity ever be unspeakably holy so long as one half of it grovels in dreams of an unspeakably holy God? As Mr. Frederic Harrison truly says, a want of faith in 'the essential dignity of man is one of the surest marks of the enervating influence of this dream of a celestial glory." The Professor accordingly re-delivered to Virginia the entire substance of his lectures in the ship. He fully impressed on her that all the intellect of the world was on the side of Humanity; and that God's existence could be disproved with a box of chemicals. He was agreeably surprised at finding her not at all unwilling to be convinced, and extremely unexacting in her demands for proof. In a few days, she had not a remnant of superstition left. "At last!" exclaimed the Professor; "it has come at last! Unspeakable happiness will surely begin now."

XVI.

No one now could possibly be more emancipated than Virginia. She tittered all day long, and whenever the Professor asked her why, she always told him she was thinking of "an intelligent First Cause," a conception which she said "was really quite killing." But when

her first burst of intellectual excitement was over, she became more serious. "All thought, Paul," she said, "is valuable mainly because it leads to action. Come, my love, my dove, my beauty, and let us kiss each other all day long. Let us enjoy the charming license which exact thought shows us we shall never be punished for."

This was a result of freedom that the Professor had never bargained for. He could not understand it; "because," he argued, "if people were to reason in that way, morality would at once cease to be possible." But he had seen so much of the world lately, that he soon recovered himself; and, recollecting that immorality was only ignorance, he began to show Virginia where her error lay-her one remaining error. "I perceive," he said, "that you are ignorant of one of the greatest triumphs of exact thought-the distinction it has established between the lower and the higher pleasures. Philosophers, who have thought the whole thing over in their studies, have become sure that as soon as the latter are presented to men they will at once leave all and follow them."

"They must be very nice pleasures," said Virginia, "if they would make me leave kissing you for the sake of them."

66

"They are nice," said the Professor. They are the pleasures of the imagination, the intellect, and the glorious apprehension of truth. Compared with these, kissing me would be quite insipid. Remain here for a moment, whilst I go to fetch something; and you shall then begin to taste them."

In a few moments Paul came back again, and found Virginia in a state of intense expectancy.

"Now- -" he exclaimed, triumphantly.

"Now" exclaimed Virginia, with a beating heart.

The Professor put his hand in his pocket, and drew slowly forth from it an object which Virginia knew well. It reminded her of the most innocent period of her life; but she hated the very sight of it none the less. It was a Colenso's Arithmetic.

"Come," said the Professor, "no truths are so pure and necessary as those of mathematics; you shall at once begin the glorious apprehension of them."

"Oh, Paul," cried Virginia, in an agony, "but I really don't care for truth at all; and you know that when I broke your tin box open and read your private letters in my search for it, you were very angry with me."

“Ah,” said Paul, holding up his finger, "but those were not necessary truths. Truths about human action and character are not necessary truths; therefore men of science care nothing about them, and they have no place in scientific systems of ethics. Pure truths are of a very different character; and however much you may misunderstand your own inclinations, you can really care for nothing so much as doing a few sums. I will set you some very easy ones to begin with; and

you shall do them by yourself, whilst I magnify in the next room the parasites of the missing link."

Virginia saw that there was no help for it. She did her sums by herself the whole morning, which, as at school she had been very good. at arithmetic, was not a hard task for her; and Paul magnified parasites in the next room, and prepared slides for his microscope.

When they met again, Paul began skipping and dancing, as if he had gone quite out of his senses; and every now and then between the skips, he gave a sepulchral groan. Virginia asked him, in astonishment, what on earth was the matter with him.

"Matter!" he exclaimed. "Why, Humanity is at last perfect! All the evils of existence are removed; we neither of us believe in a God or a celestial future; and we are both in full enjoyment of the higher pleasures, and the apprehension of scientific truth. And therefore I skip because Humanity is so unspeakably happy; and I groan because it is so unspeakably solemn."

"Alas, alas!" cried Virginia, " and would not you like to kiss me?" "No," said the Professor, sternly; "and you would not like me to kiss you. It is impossible that one half of Humanity should prefer the pleasure of unlawful love to the pleasure of finding out scientific truths."

But," pleaded Virginia, "cannot we enjoy both?”

"No," said the Professor; "for if I began to kiss you, I should soon not care two straws about the parasites of the missing link."

"Well," said Virginia, "it is nice of you to say that; but stillAh me!"

XVII.

Virginia was preparing, with a rueful face, to resume her enjoyment of the higher pleasures, when a horrible smell, like that of an open drain, was suddenly blown in through the window.

"Oh, rapture!" cried the Professor, as Virginia was stopping her nose with her handkerchief, "I smell the missing link." And in another instant he was gone.

66

'Well," said Virginia, "here is one comfort. Whilst Paul is away I shall be relieved from the higher pleasures. Alas!" she cried, as she flung herself down on the sofa, "he is so nice-looking, and such an enlightened thinker. But it is plain he has never loved, or else very certainly he would love again.”

Paul returned in about a couple of hours, again unsuccessful in his search.

"Ah," cried Virginia, "I am so glad you have not caught the creature!"

"Glad," echoed the Professor, "glad! Do you know that till I have caught the missing link the cause of glorious truth will suffer grievously? The missing link is the token of the solemn fact of our

origin from inorganic matter. I did catch one blessed glimpse of him. He had certainly a silver band about his neck. He was about three feet high. He was rolling in a lump of carrion. It is through him that we are related to the stars-the holy, the glorious stars, about which we know so little."

"Bother the stars!" said Virginia; "I couldn't bear, Paul, that anything should come between you and me. I have been thinking of you and longing for you the whole time you have been away."

"What!" cried Paul, "and how have you been able to forego the pleasures of the intellect?"

"I have deserted them," cried Virginia, "for the pleasures of the imagination, which I gathered from you were also very ennobling. And I found they were so; for I have been imagining that you loved me. Why is the reality less ennobling than the imagination? Paul, you shall love me; I will force you to love me. It will make us both so happy we shall never go to hell for it; and it cannot possibly cause the slightest scandal."

The Professor was more bewildered than ever by these appeals. He wondered how Humanity would ever get on if one half of it cared nothing for pure truth, and persisted in following the vulgar impulses that had been the most distinguishing feature of its benighted pastthat is to say, those ages of its existence of which any record has been preserved for us. Luckily, however, Virginia came to his assistance.

"I think I know, Paul," she said, "why I do not care as I should do for the intellectual pleasures. We have been both seeking them by ourselves; and we have been therefore egoistic hedonists. It is quite true, as you say, that selfishness is a despicable thing. Let me," she went on, sitting down beside him, "look through your microscope along with you. I think perhaps, if we shared the pleasure, the missing link's parasites might have some interest for me."

The Professor was overjoyed at this proposal. The two sat down side by side, and tried their best to look simultaneously through the eye-piece of the microscope. Virginia in a moment expressed herself much satisfied. It is true they saw nothing; but their cheeks touched. The Professor too seemed contented; and said they should both be in a state of rapture when they had got the right focus. At last Virginia whispered, with a soft smile

"Suppose we put that nasty microscope aside; it is only in the way. And then, oh, Paul! dear love, dove of a Paul! we can kiss each other to our hearts' content."

Paul thought Virginia quite incorrigible, and rushed headlong out of the room.

XVIII.

"Alas!" cried Paul, "what can be done to convince one half of Humanity that it is really devoted to the higher pleasures and does