As she uttered these words, her eyes fell on a tin box of the Professor's, marked 'Private,' which he always kept carefully locked, and which had before now excited her curiosity. Suddenly she became conscious of a new impulse. 'I will pursue truth!' she exclaimed. 'I will break that box open, and I will see what is inside it. Ah!' she added, as with the aid of the poker she at last wrenched off the padlock. 'Paul may be right, after all. There is more interest in the pursuit of truth than I thought there was.'
The box was full of papers, letters, and diaries, the greater part of which were marked 'Strictly private.' Seeing this, Virginia's appetite for truth became keener than ever. She instantly began her researches. The more she read, the more eager she became; and the more private appeared the nature of the documents, the more insatiable did her thirst for truth grow. To her extreme surprise, she gathered that the Professor had begun life as a clergyman. There were several photographs of him in his surplice; and a number of devout prayers, apparently composed by himself for his own personal use. This discovery was the result of her labours.
'Certainly,' she said, 'it is one of extreme significance. If Paul was a priest once, he must be a priest now. Orders are indelible—at least in the Church of England I know they are.'
CHAPTER XV.
Paul came back, to Virginia's extreme relief, without the missing link. But he was still radiant in spite of his failure; for he had discovered, he said, a place where the creature had apparently slept, and he had collected in a card-paper box a large number of its parasites.
'I am glad,' said Virginia, 'that you have not found the missing link: though as to thinking that we really came from monkeys, of course that is too absurd. Now if you could have brought me a nice monkey, I should really have liked that. The Bishop has promised that I shall have a darling one, if I ever reach him—ah me!—if——Paul,' continued Virginia, in a very solemn voice, after a long pause, 'do you know that whilst you have been away I have been pursuing truth? I rather liked it; and I found it very, very significant.'
'Oh, joy!' exclaimed the Professor. 'Oh, unspeakable radiance! Oh, holy, oh essentially dignified Humanity! it will very soon be perfect! Tell me, Virginia, what truths have you been discovering?'
'One truth about you, Paul,' said Virginia, very gravely, 'and one truth about me. I burn—oh, I burn to tell them to you!'
The Professor was enraptured to hear that one half of Humanity had been thus studying human nature; and he began asking Virginia if her discoveries belonged to the domain of historical or biological science. Meanwhile Virginia had flung herself on her knees before him, and was exclaiming, in piteous accents—