"Who was there?" Professor Anstice asked at length, pushing away his books as if bidding them a reluctant good-night.
"Oh, no one whom you know, I think, except Mr. Flint."
"Flint? Does he go to such things?"
"Yes, and appears to find them sufficiently entertaining, though I fancy he must be decidedly over twenty-five. By the way," she added, with an elaborately careless aside, "what do you think of Mr. Flint, on the whole?"
"I think, for a clever man, he plays the worst game of whist I ever saw."
"Yes, yes," admitted Winifred, with light mockery in her tone; "but what do you think of him in lesser matters,—general character, for instance?"
The Professor looked at his daughter with a little quizzical sadness in his faded gray eyes. He began to perceive the drift of her banter.
"It would be difficult to state exactly what I think of him when you put it so broadly as that," he answered. "Flint's character is complex. He has in him the making of a fine man; but the question is, will it ever be made? He seems to me abnormally lacking in personal ambition,—does not seem to care whether he is heard of or not,—has a sort of contempt for the little neighborhood notorieties which give most men pleasure. It is as if he were taking a bird's-eye view of himself, and every one else, and they all looked so small that the trifling variations in prominence did not matter."
Winifred looked at her father in silent surprise. She had no idea that he had made such a study of the younger man. He paused for a moment; but meeting his daughter's absorbed gaze, he continued: "The thing which gives me most hope of Flint is his genuine devotion to truth. Positive or negative truth—it is all [Pg 297] the same to him. Now, many a man is loyal to his convictions; but very few are loyal to their doubts. He will 'come into port greatly or sail with God the seas.' Fine line that, isn't it? The sound is quite majestic if you say it over aloud—'Come into port—'"