there with at least as much view to effect as
to consumption. Hugh, attempting to
disengage a bunch of grapes, considerably
disarranged the whole fabric, and a large,
golden-rind fruit rolled to the side of Paul's
plate.

"Significant!" laughed Hugh. "There's
the means of solving your difficulties,—the
forbidden fruit!*—eat it, and see what will
come of it."

* A West Indian fruit somewhat resembling a very
large lemon, called the shaddock, is, according to a
tradition, the authority of which is unknown to us,
supposed to be the forbidden fruit of Scripture.

"The forbidden fruit!" The name sounded
strangely suggestive in Paul's ears. He cut
it languidly, half in jest half in earnest, as one
trying an experiment of which his reason
is ashamed, and tasted it; then he amused
himself picking out the pips, and scattering
them about his plate. When Hugh was
looking the other way, he put two or three of
them into his pocket; and, not very long after,
the party broke up.

Paul was only twenty. A somewhat delicate
constitution, an intensely imaginative
and nervously excitable temperament, an
intellectual organisation of the finest structure,
and a love of the study of the abstruse
and marvellous, were his predominant
characteristics. The early death of his parents
had left him free to follow the somewhat
dangerous bent of his inclinations. He was,
moreover, unfortunately for one so endowed,
rich far beyond the usual extent of his
expenditure; so that no wholesome necessity
to labour, no occasion to strengthen himself
by wrestling with the world, had taught him
to brace his nerves, to gird himself, and
acquit himself like a man.

The consequence was that Paul became an
inveterate dreamer: discontented with a
life, the secret and end of which he could
only speculate on without solving; and, like
most men and most women in similar cases,
before learning that knowledge is not wisdom,
he sought—instead of utilising the gift of
existence, seeking out and performing the
simple duties lying in his path, with all his
heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and
leaving the rest to God,—to explain what
man never has explained, does, or will
explain while the flesh confines the spirit.

So Paul went down to the country and
established himself all alone in the old place,
that was his by right of ancient inheritance,
and read all the mysterious books in the
library, and wandered about day and night
through the dimmest recesses of the woods
and the ghostliest chambers of the mansion,
and questioned heaven and earth why he
was born, and for what he should live and
die. And all the while God's sunshine and
God's flowers and insects and God's birds
that sung of love and praise in the boughs
over his head; and God's labourers that
worked in the broad fields by day and
returned tranquil and contented to their cottage
homes and wives and children at night, were
whispering the answer; but other voices
made a pining restless noise in his heart, and
prevented his hearing it.

One day, when worn and haggard with
study and speculation of the weary theme, he
flung down his books and wandered into the
beautiful conservatory into which the gloomy
library opened. As he drew aside the heavy
curtain that hung over the entrance, the
burst of warmth and light and perfume, for a
moment, almost overpowered his strained
senses; then, as he became more used to the
atmosphere, its delicious essence seemed to
infuse itself into his young veins, and to quicken
the sickly life within him. He walked about,
looking at and smelling the flowers, and
watching, with a sort of vague, idle pleasure,
the gambols of the gold fish in the fountain.
He sat down under a lofty rose-tree, whose
fruity-scented blooms hung bending over him;
a chill autumnal breeze stole through an
open glass. The rose-tree shivered, and the
odorous petals of one of the fullest blossoms
showered sadly and silently over his head.

"The old story! birth, life, death—why,
and for what?"

A peacock-butterfly settled on a heliotrope
before his eyes. It heaved up and down its
orbed and gorgeous wings, and he watched it
admiringly; then it took its flight aloft
among the fuchsia-bells that hung from the
roof; and, while struggling and beating the
painted down off its beautiful wings in
striving to force its way through the glass, a
spider rushed from its ambush and secured
it, winding his crushing net round and round
the trembling creature till it presented nothing
but an unformed dingy mass.

Paul shrugged his shoulders and walked
away. The odorous blossoms and yellow
globes of a fine orange-tree attracted his
wandering attention. Suddenly a recollection
flashed across him—the forbidden fruit!
Obeying a hasty and unreasoning impluse, he
left the conservatory, sought and found the
seeds he had preserved, and brought them
down. He took a large flower-pot, filled it
with a rich mould, planted the seeds in it,
moistened the earth, and placed it in the
sunniest spot. The he went back to the
library, he resumed his studies, and forgot all
about his gardening.

A fortnight passed before Paul again
visited the conservatory. Not a thought of
the forbidden fruit had, during that time,
entered his brain; and it was only when by
chance the flower-pot caught his eye, that he
remembered, not without a certain feeling of
curiosity, his plantation. He approached,
and saw, spreading themselves above the
dark mould, two pale-green leaves. Paul
took up the pot, and examined the poor little
plant with a pleasure and interest he had
never felt for the richest and finest productions
that had developed their luxuriant
beauties under the culture of other hands.