The Professors House
false. What she had was a richly endowed nature
that responded strongly to life and art, and very
vehement likes and dislikes which were often quite
out of all proportion to the trivial object or person
that aroused them. Before his marriage, and for
years afterward, Lillian’s prejudices, her divinations
about people and art (always instinctive and unexplained, but nearly always right), were the most
interesting things in St. Peter’s life. When he
accepted almost the first position offered him, in
order to marry at once, and came to take the chair
of European history at Hamilton, he was thrown
upon his wife for mental companionship. Most of
his colleagues were much older than he, but they
were not his equals either in scholarship or in experience of the world. The only other man in the
faculty who was carrying on important research
work was Doctor Crane, the professor of physics.
St. Peter saw a good deal of him, though outside his specialty he was uninteresting—a narrow-minded
man, and painfully unattractive. Years ago Crane
had begun to suffer from a malady which in time
proved incurable, and which now sent him up for
an operation periodically. St. Peter had had no
friend in Hamilton of whom Lillian could possibly
be jealous until Tom Outland came along, so well
fitted by nature and early environment to help him
with his work on the Spanish Adventurers.
When he had almost reached his old house and
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