“It is depressing to think,” said Arthur, rather sententiously, but really chiefly with the object of getting at his companion’s views, “that all this cannot last, but is, as it were, like ourselves, under sentence of death.”

“It rose and fell and fleeted
Upon earth’s troubled sea,
A wave that swells to vanish
Into eternity. 
Oh! mystery and wonder
Of wings that cannot fly,
Of ears that cannot hearken,
Of life that lives—­to die!”

quoth Angela, by way of comment.

“Whose lines are those?” asked Arthur.  “I don’t know them.”

“My own,” she said, shyly; “that is, they are a translation of a verse of a Greek ode I wrote for Mr. Fraser.  I will say you the original, if you like; I think it better than the translation, and I believe that it is fair Greek.”

“Thank you, thank you, Miss Blue-stocking; I am quite satisfied with your English version.  You positively alarm me, Angela.  Most people are quite content if they can put a poem written in English into Greek; you reverse the process, and, having coolly given expression to your thoughts in Greek, condescend to translate them into your native tongue.  I only wish you had been at Cambridge, or—­what do they call the place?—­Girton.  It would have been a joke to see you come out double-first.”

“Ah!” she broke in, blushing, “you are like Mr. Fraser, you overrate my acquirements.  I am sorry to say I am not the perfect scholar you think me, and about most things I am shockingly ignorant.  I should indeed be silly if, after ten years’ patient work under such a scholar as Mr. Fraser, I did not know some classics and mathematics.  Why, do you know, for the last three years that we worked together, we used as a rule to carry on our ordinary conversations during work in Latin and Greek, month and month about, sometimes with the funniest results.  One never knows how little one does know of a dead language till one tries to talk it.  Just try to speak in Latin for the next five minutes, and you will see.”

“Thank you, I am not going to expose my ignorance for your amusement, Angela.”

She laughed.

“No,” she said, “it is you who wish to amuse yourself at my expense by trying to make me believe that I am a great scholar.  But what I was going to say, before you attacked me about my fancied acquirements, was that, in my opinion, your remark about the whole world being under sentence of death, was rather a morbid one.”

“Why?  It is obviously true.”

“Yes, in a sense; but to my mind this scene speaks more of resurrection than of death.  Look at the earth pushing up her flowers, and the dead trees breaking into beauty.  There is no sign of death there, but rather of a renewed and glorified life.”