Laura started.
"I saw him two or three times," she said, as she made her way to the warm but dark corner near the fire. "Is he in Cambridge?"
The doctor nodded.
"Come to embrace us all—breathing benediction on learning and on science! There has been a Catholic Congress somewhere."—He looked at his friend. "That will show us the way!"
The friend—a small, lively-eyed, black-bearded man, just returned from some theological work in a German university—threw back his head and laughed good-humouredly.
The talk turned on Catholic learning old and new; on the assumptions and limitations of it; on the forms taken by the most recent Catholic Apologetic; and so, like a vessel descending a great river, passed out at last, steered by Friedland, among the breakers of first principles.
As a rule the doctor talked in paradox and ellipse. He threw his sentences into air, and let them find their feet as they could.
But to-day, unconsciously, his talk took a tone that was rare with him—became prophetical, pontifical—assumed a note of unction. And often, as Molly noticed, with a slight instinctive gesture—a fatherly turning towards that golden spot made by Laura's hair among the shadows.
His friend fell silent after a while—watching Friedland with small sharp
eyes. He had come there to discuss a new edition of Sidonius
Apollinaris,—was himself one of the driest and acutest of investigators.
All this talk for babes seemed to him the merest waste of time.
Friedland, however, with a curious feeling, let himself be carried away by it.