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His scientific jargon was as bewildering as his slang; and there were even moments in his discourse when Miss Anson ceased to distinguish between them; but the suspense with which he continued to gaze on her acted as a challenge to her scattered thoughts.

“The amphioxus,” she murmured, half-rising. “It’s an animal, isn’t it–a fish? Yes, I think I remember.” She sank back with the inward look of one who retraces some lost line of association.

Gradually the distance cleared, the details started into life. In her researches for the biography she had patiently followed every ramification of her subject, and one of these overgrown paths now led her back to the episode in question. The great Orestes’s title of “Doctor” had in fact not been merely the spontaneous tribute of a national admiration; he had actually studied medicine in his youth, and his diaries, as his granddaughter now recalled, showed that he had passed through a brief phase of anatomical ardor before his attention was diverted to super-sensual problems. It had indeed seemed to Paulina, as she scanned those early pages, that they revealed a spontaneity, a freshness of feeling somehow absent from his later lucubrations–as though this one emotion had reached him directly, the others through some intervening medium. In the excess of her commemorative zeal she had even struggled through the unintelligible pamphlet to which a few lines in the journal had bitterly directed her. But the subject and the phraseology were alien to her and unconnected with her conception of the great man’s genius; and after a hurried perusal she had averted her thoughts from the episode as from a revelation of failure. At length she rose a little unsteadily, supporting herself against the writing-table. She looked hesitatingly about the room; then she drew a key from her old-fashioned reticule and unlocked a drawer beneath one of the book-cases. Young Corby watched her breathlessly. With a tremulous hand she turned over the dusty documents that seemed to fill the drawer. “Is this it?” she said, holding out a thin discolored volume.

He seized it with a gasp. “Oh, by George,” he said, dropping into the nearest chair.

She stood observing him strangely as his eye devoured the mouldy pages.

“Is this the only copy left?” he asked at length, looking up for a moment as a thirsty man lifts his head from his glass.

“I think it must be. I found it long ago, among some old papers that my aunts were burning up after my grandmother’s death. They said it was of no use–that he’d always meant to destroy the whole edition and that I ought to respect his wishes. But it was something he had written; to burn it was like shutting the door against his voice–against something he had once wished to say, and that nobody had listened to. I wanted him to feel that I was always here, ready to listen, even when others hadn’t thought it worth while; and so I kept the pamphlet, meaning to carry out his wish and destroy it before my death.”

Her visitor gave a groan of retrospective anguish. “And but for me–but for to-day–you would have?”

“I should have thought it my duty.”

“Oh, by George–by George,” he repeated, subdued afresh by the inadequacy of speech.

She continued to watch him in silence. At length he jumped up and impulsively caught her by both hands.

“He’s bigger and bigger!” he almost shouted. “He simply leads the field! You’ll help me go to the bottom of this, won’t you? We must turn out all the papers–letters, journals, memoranda. He must have made notes. He must have left some record of what led up to this. We must leave nothing unexplored. By Jove,” he cried, looking up at her with his bright convincing smile, “do you know you’re the granddaughter of a Great Man?”

Her color flickered like a girl’s. “Are you–sure of him?” she whispered, as though putting him on his guard against a possible betrayal of trust.