about her:  no gloss on her skin, no glitter in her eyes, no varnish on her soul.  Simple and dark and pure, there she was, for God and her master alone to conquer and understand.  Her flesh was cold and colorless,—­there were no surface tints on it,—­it warmed sometimes slowly from far within; her voice was quiet,—­out of her heart; her hair, the only beauty of the woman, was lustreless brown, lay in unpolished folds of dark shadow.  I saw such hair once, only once.  It had been cut from the head of a man, who, quiet and simple as a child, lived out the law of his nature, and set the world at defiance,—­Bysshe Shelley.

The Doctor, talking to her father, watched the girl furtively, took in every point, as one might critically survey a Damascus blade which he was going to carry into battle.  There was neither love nor scorn in his look,—­a mere fixedness of purpose to make use of her some day.  He talked, meanwhile, glancing at her now and then, as if the subject they discussed were indirectly linked with his plan for her.  If it were, she was unconscious of it.  She sat on the wooden step of the porch, looking out on the melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growing cool and dimmer in the dun twilight, not hearing what they said, until the sharpened, earnest tones roused her.

“You will fail, Knowles.”

It was her father who spoke.

“Nothing can save such a scheme from failure.  Neither the French nor German Socialists attempted to base their systems on the lowest class, as you design.”

“I know,” said Knowles.  “That accounts for their partial success.”

“Let me understand your plan practically,” eagerly demanded her father.

She thought Knowles evaded the question,—­wished to leave the subject.  Perhaps he did not regard the poor old schoolmaster as a practical judge of practical matters.  All his life he had called him thriftless and unready.

“It never will do, Knowles,” he went on in his slow way.  “Any plan, Phalanstery or Community, call it what you please, founded on self-government, is based on a sham, the tawdriest of shams.”

The old schoolmaster shook his head as one who knows, and tried to push the thin gray hairs out of his eyes in a groping way.  Margaret lifted them back so quietly that he did not feel her.

“You’ll call the Republic a sham next!” said the Doctor, coolly aggravating.

“The Republic!” The old man quickened his tone, like a war-horse scenting the battle near at hand.  “There never was a thinner-crusted Devil’s egg in the world than democracy.  I think I’ve told you that before?”

“I think you have,” said the other, dryly.

“You always were a Tory, Mr. Howth,” said his wife, in her placid, creamy way.  “It is in the blood, I think, Doctor.  The Howths fought under Cornwallis, you know.”

The schoolmaster waited until his wife had ended.

“Very true, Mrs. Howth,” he said, with a grave smile.  Then his thin face grew hot again.