The lecture, to John, was delightful—­so clear, so logical, went so far back, and so deep down, and so high up.  “Walked all around that fellow I heard last week on the other side,” John said.  But Marjory, who had herself taken a long walk that afternoon, thought the whole thing unutterably stupid:  her eyelids would drop, her neck felt double-jointed and would not stay erect.  Fortunately, their seats were far back, not very brilliantly lighted, and Marjory’s had the advantage of being next a pillar.  John, however, considered this fact unfortunate, for he could not obtain a good view of the remarkable figures with which the old gentleman was illustrating his lecture, talking in spasmodic jerks as he drew, and when John saw a dear and scientific friend on a front seat, with a vacant place beside him, he could not resist the temptation to take it.  He looked at Marjory:  she was half asleep, but still contending bravely for the other half.  He surveyed their immediate neighbors—­three strong-minded-looking women just behind them; a fatherly-looking old gentleman in the seat next his own; a pillar protecting Marjory on the other side, and two highly respectable-looking young men in the row of seats before them, who appeared to be listening intently and occasionally taking notes; at least, one of them was, and he submitted his note-book to the criticism of the other, who smiled approvingly.  The seats immediately in front of his own and Marjory’s were vacant.

“Would you mind, Peggy,” said John, deprecatingly, “if I left you for a few minutes?  I can’t half see what he is drawing, and there is a vacant front seat.  I’ll only stay five minutes.”

“Certainly, dear,” said Marjory with sleepy amiability:  “stay up there till he has finished, and then come back for me.  I am not at all afraid.”

“Oh no:  I will not do that,” answered John, considerately, “but I do want to go for a few minutes.”  So away he went, and, once up there, he of course “took no note of time,” and Marjory was left to her own devices.  These were few and simple, but small causes sometimes produce great effects.  She had on those gloves, of course.

She never could recall that part of the evening very distinctly.  A confused recollection that she found the pillar very comfortable for a while; that finally the ridges in it hurt her cheek; that she had one or two lucid intervals between her naps, in one of which she concluded that it would be better to take those gloves off for fear of marking her face; and that while she was doing so she caught a sentence or two of the lecture—­something like this:  “This one essential point of difference is in itself convincing proof of the theory which I hold.  The difference in the formation of the hands is a difficulty which no theory of development can overcome.”  These few insignificant items were all which remained in her memory:  then the little gentleman’s voice gradually took to her ears the form of a chant:  his “theory,” as the simple rustic said about a matter less abstruse, “might be wrong, but it was awful soothin’,” and pleasant dreams of having four hands, all available, and not of the objectionable sort whose bones the professor was dangling, beguiled the time for Marjory—­how long she knew not.