This was wandering whimsically far afield, but as I caught the good-humoured flicker of the professor’s glance at our companion I thought I saw a purpose in his deviation.  Saffren turned toward him wonderingly, his unconscious, eager look remarkably emphasised and brightened.

“All such things are most strange—­great mysteries,” continued the professor.  “For when a man has made the selection, that being does become all the universe, and for him there is nothing else at all—­ nothing else anywhere!”

Saffren’s cheeks and temples were flushed as they had been when I saw him returning that afternoon; and his eyes were wide, fixed upon Keredec in a stare of utter amazement.

“Yes, that is true,” he said slowly.  “How did you know?”

Keredec returned his look with an attentive scrutiny, and made some exclamation under his breath, which I did not catch, but there was no mistaking his high good humour.

“Bravo!” he shouted, rising and clapping the other upon the shoulder.  “You will soon cure my rheumatism if you ask me questions like that!  Ho, ho, ho!” He threw back his head and let the mighty salvos forth.  “Ho, ho, ho!  How do I know?  The young, always they believe they are the only ones who were ever young!  Ho, ho, ho!  Come, we shall make those lessons very easy to-night.  Come, my friend!  How could that big, old Keredec know of such things?  He is too old, too foolish!  Ho, ho, ho!”

As he went up the steps, the courtyard reverberating again to his laughter, his arm resting on Saffren’s shoulders, but not so heavily as usual.  The door of their salon closed upon them, and for a while Keredec’s voice could be heard booming cheerfully; it ended in another burst of laughter.

A moment later Saffren opened the door and called to me.

“Here,” I answered from my veranda, where I had just lighted my second cigar.

“No more work to-night.  All finished,” he cried jubilantly, springing down the steps.  “I’m coming to have a talk with you.”

Amedee had removed the candles, the moon had withdrawn in fear of a turbulent mob of clouds, rioting into our sky from seaward; the air smelled of imminent rain, and it was so dark that I could see my visitor only as a vague, tall shape; but a happy excitement vibrated in his rich voice, and his step on the gravelled path was light and exultant.

“I won’t sit down,” he said.  “I’ll walk up and down in front of the veranda—­if it doesn’t make you nervous.”

For answer I merely laughed; and he laughed too, in genial response, continuing gaily: 

“Oh, it’s all so different with me!  Everything is.  That blind feeling I told you of—­it’s all gone.  I must have been very babyish, the other day; I don’t think I could feel like that again.  It used to seem to me that I lived penned up in a circle of blank stone walls; I couldn’t see over the top for myself at all, though now and then Keredec would boost me up and let me get a little glimmer of the country round about—­but never long enough to see what it was really like.  But it’s not so now.  Ah!”—­he drew a long breath—­“I’d like to run.  I think I could run all the way to the top of a pretty fair-sized mountain to-night, and then”—­ he laughed—­“jump off and ride on the clouds.”