“I’m so tired of all this yachting!” she said, peevishly.  “It isn’t amusing to me!”

“I’m very sorry!” I answered;—­“If you feel like that, why not give it up at once?”

“Oh, it’s father’s whim!” she said-"And if he makes up his mind there’s no moving him.  One thing, however, I’m determined to do—­and that is—­” Here she stopped, looking at me curiously.

I returned her gaze questioningly.

“And that is—­what?”

“To get as far away as ever we can from that terrible ‘Dream’ yacht and its owner!”—­she replied—­“That man is a devil!”

I laughed.  I could not help laughing.  The estimate she had formed of one so vastly her superior as Santoris struck me as more amusing than blamable.  I am often accustomed to hear the hasty and narrow verdict of small-minded and unintelligent persons pronounced on men and women of high attainment and great mental ability; therefore, that she should show herself as not above the level of the common majority did not offend so much as it entertained me.  However, my laughter made her suddenly angry.

“Why do you laugh?” she demanded.  “You look quite pagan in that lace rest-gown—­I suppose you call it a restgown!—­with all your hair tumbling loose about you!  And that laugh of yours is a pagan laugh!”

I was so surprised at her odd way of speaking that for a moment I could find no words.  She looked at me with a kind of hard disfavour in her eyes.

“That’s the reason,”—­she went on—­“why you find life agreeable.  Pagans always did.  They revelled in sunshine and open air, and found all sorts of excuses for their own faults, provided they got some pleasure out of them.  That’s quite your temperament!  And they laughed at serious things—­just as you do!”

The mirror showed me my own reflection, and I saw myself still smiling.

“Do I laugh at serious things?” I said.  “Dear Miss Harland, I am not aware of it!  But I cannot take Mr. Santoris as a ‘devil’ seriously!”

“He is!” And she nodded her head emphatically—­“And all those queer beliefs he holds—­and you hold them too!—­are devilish!  If you belonged to the Church of Rome, you would not be allowed to indulge in such wicked theories for a moment.”

“Ah!  The Church of Rome fortunately cannot control thought!”—­I said—­“Not even the thoughts of its own children!  And some of the beliefs of the Church of Rome are more blasphemous and barbarous than all the paganism of the ancient world!  Tell me, what are my ’wicked theories’?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” she replied, vaguely and inconsequently—­“You believe there’s no death—­and you think we all make our own illnesses and misfortunes,—­and I’ve heard you say that the idea of Eternal Punishment is absurd—­so in a way you are as bad as father, who declares there’s nothing in the Universe but gas and atoms—­no God and no anything.  You really are quite as much of an atheist as he is!  Dr. Brayle says so.”