"I hope you won't mind my sitting here," he said, timidly. "It seems
rude to talk down at you from a height."
She shook her head and threw two more stones into the pool. He could
think of nothing further to say, and as she did not speak, but
gravely watched the circles in the water, he began to stare at them
too; and they sat in silence for some minutes, steadfastly regarding
the waves, she as if there were matter for infinite thought in them,
and he as though the spectacle wholly confounded him. At last she
said, "Have you ever realized what a vibration is?"
"No," said Cashel, after a blank look at her.
"I am glad to hear you make that admission. Science has reduced
everything nowadays to vibration. Light, sound, sensation--all the
mysteries of nature are either vibrations or interference of
vibrations. There," she said, throwing another pair of pebbles in,
and pointing to the two sets of widening rings as they overlapped
one another; "the twinkling of a star, and the pulsation in a chord
of music, are THAT. But I cannot picture the thing in my own mind. I
wonder whether the hundreds of writers of text-books on physics, who
talk so glibly of vibrations, realize them any better than I do."
"Not a bit of it. Not one of them. Not half so well," said Cashel,
cheerfully, replying to as much of her speech as he understood.
"Perhaps the subject does not interest you," she said, turning to
him.
"On the contrary; I like it of all things," said he, boldly.
"I can hardly say so much for my own interest in it. I am told that
you are a student, Mr. Cashel Byron. What are your favorite
studies?--or rather, since that is generally a hard question to
answer, what are your pursuits?"
Alice listened.
Cashel looked doggedly at Lydia, and his color slowly deepened. "I
am a professor," he said.
"A professor of what? I know I should ask of where; but that would
only elicit the name of a college, which would convey no real
information to me."
"I am a professor of science," said Cashel, in a low voice, looking
down at his left fist, which he was balancing in the air before him,
and stealthily hitting his bent knee as if it were another person's
face.
"Physical or moral science?" persisted Lydia.
"Physical science," said Cashel. "But there's more moral science in
it than people think."