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as much time as possible with my much esteemed former pupil.”

“Always your pupil, dear master,” said Alice, gracefully pressing his hand, and the professor retired bowing to the ground, and walking backwards, as if in the presence of royalty—a proceeding which in an Englishman would have appeared too ridiculous for anything, but which a fat podgy elderly German musician could carry out with impressive dignity.

When she went to her room, Alice opened the window and for a long time gazed out into the bush. So mysterious and dreamlike it all looked, the dark restless waves of woodland sighing and stirring as in sleep, and the far-off laughter of the river rising and falling on the slow breeze, like the voice of some living creature rejoicing alone in the darkness. There was a cold sweetness in the air, and a nameless indistinct under-roll in the forest, that might have been the roar of some great city in the distance. Darkly outlined against a pale arc of sky, the enormous mountain barrier blocked out half the horizon to the east. “What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!” she murmured at last, closing the window, as Canopus began to swim upwards from the Northern horizon, like some great battleship sailing among the fleet of smaller stars.