"Didn't he say, just now, he wanted to know ?" Carmina neither heard nor heeded her.

Zo tried Benjulia next.

"Shall I tell you what we do in the schoolroom, when we want to know ?" His attention, like Carmina's attention, seemed to be far away from her.

Zo impatiently reminded him of her presence--she laid her hand on his knee.
It was only the hand of a child--an idle, quaint, perverse child--but it touched, ignorantly touched, the one tender place in his nature, unprofaned by the infernal cruelties which made his life acceptable to him; the one tender place, hidden so deep from the man himself, that even his far-reaching intellect groped in vain to find it out.
There, nevertheless, was the feeling which drew him to Zo, contending successfully with his medical interest in a case of nervous derangement.
That unintelligible sympathy with a child looked dimly out of his eyes, spoke faintly in his voice, when he replied to her.

"Well," he said, "what do you do in the schoolroom ?" "We look in the dictionary," Zo answered.