“Kiss me, Dad.”

Mr. Stone hesitated.  Then his lips resolutely touched her eye.  “It is wet,” he said.  He seemed for a moment struggling to grasp the meaning of moisture in connection with the human eye.  Soon his face again became serene.  “The heart,” he said, “is a dark well; its depth unknown.  I have lived eighty years.  I am still drawing water.”

“Draw a little for me, Dad.”

This time Mr. Stone looked at his daughter anxiously, and suddenly spoke, as if afraid that if he waited he might forget.

“You are unhappy!”

Bianca put her face down to his tweed sleeve.  “How nice your coat smells!” she murmured.

“You are unhappy,” repeated Mr. Stone.

Bianca dropped his hand, and moved away.

Mr. Stone followed her.  “Why?” he said.  Then, grasping his brow, he added:  “If it would do you any good, my dear, to hear a page or two, I could read to you.”

Bianca shook her head.

“No; talk to me!”

Mr. Stone answered simply:  “I have forgotten.”

“You talk to that little girl,” murmured Bianca.

Mr. Stone seemed to lose himself in reverie.

“If that is true,” he said, following out his thoughts, “it must be due to the sex instinct not yet quite extinct.  It is stated that the blackcock will dance before his females to a great age, though I have never seen it.”

“If you dance before her,” said Bianca, with her face averted, “can’t you even talk to me?”

“I do not dance, my dear,” said Mr. Stone; “I will do my best to talk to you.”

There was a silence, and he began to pace the room.  Bianca, by the empty fireplace, watched a shower of rain driving past the open window.

“This is the time of year,” said Mr. Stone suddenly; “when lambs leap off the ground with all four legs at a time.”  He paused as though for an answer; then, out of the silence, his voice rose again—­it sounded different:  “There is nothing in Nature more symptomatic of that principle which should underlie all life.  Live in the future; regret nothing; leap!  A lamb which has left earth with all four legs at once is the symbol of true life.  That she must come down again is but an inevitable accident.  ’In those days men were living on their pasts.  They leaped with one, or, at the most, two legs at a time; they never left the ground, or in leaving, they wished to know the reason why.  It was this paralysis’”—­Mr. Stone did not pause, but, finding himself close beside his desk, took up his pen—­“’it was this paralysis of the leaping nerve which undermined their progress.  Instead of millions of leaping lambs, ignorant of why they leaped, they were a flock of sheep lifting up one leg and asking whether it was or was not worth their while to lift another.’”

The words were followed by a silence, broken only by the scratching of the quill with which Mr. Stone was writing.