Theos glanced at him in wonder,—­the man must be mad, he thought, since surely any one in his senses could see that two objects placed with other two must necessarily make four!

“I confess you surprise me greatly, sir!”—­he said, and, in spite of himself, a little quiver of laughter shook his voice..  “What I asked was by way of jest,—­and I never thought to hear so simple a subject treated with so much profound and almost doubting seriousness!  See!”—­and he picked up four small stones from the roadway—­“Count these one by one, . . how many have you?  Surely even a professor from Hypharus could find no more, and no less than four?”

Very deliberately, and with unruffled equanimity, the other took the pebbles in his hand, turned them over and over, and finally placed them in a row on the edge of the balustrade near which he stood.

“There seem to be four, . .” he then observed placidly—­“But I would not swear to it,—­nor to anything else of which the actuality is only supported by the testimony of my own eyes and sense of touch.”

“Good heavens, man!” cried Theos, in amazement,—­“But a moment since, you were praising the excellence of Reason, and the progressive system of learning that was to educate human beings into a contempt for the Supernatural and Spiritual, and yet almost in the same breath you tell me you cannot rely on the evidence of your own senses!  Was there ever anything more utterly incoherent and irrational!”

And he flung the pebbles into the redly flowing river with a gesture of irritation and impatience.  The scientist,—­if scientist he could be called,—­gazed at him abstractedly, and stroked his well-shaven chin with a somewhat dejected air.  Presently heaving a deep sigh, he said: 

“Alas, I have again betrayed myself! ... ’tis my fatal destiny!  Always, by some unlooked-for mischance, I am compelled to avow what most I desire to conceal!  Can you not understand, sir,”—­and he laid his hand persuasively on Theos’s arm,—­“that a Theory may be one thing and one’s own private opinion another?  My Theory is my profession,—­I live by it!  Suppose I resigned it,—­well, then I should also have to resign my present position in the Royal Institutional College,—­my house, my servants, and my income.  I advance the interests of pure Human Reason, because the Age has a tendency to place Reason as the first and highest attribute of Man,—­and it would not pay me to pronounce my personal preference for the natural and vastly superior gift of Intellectual Instinct.  I advise my scholars to become atheists, because I perceive they have a positive passion for Atheism, and it is not my business, nor would it be to my advantage to interfere with the declared predilections of my wealthiest patrons.  Concerning my own ideas on these matters, they are absolutely nil, ...  I have no fixed principles,—­because”—­and his brows contracted in a puzzled line —­“it is entirely out of my ability to fix anything!