Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/338

302 Underhill broke off to murmur, It was many and many a year ago,
 * In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived, whom you may know
 * By the name of Annabel Lee."

"Oh, stick to business!" urged the other. "What made you think of Annie?"

"Well, if you really must know," confessed the young man, "I was thinking of my indulgent father and my adoring mother. As Annie Laurie lives with them the connection is obvious."

"And what made you think of your parents?"

"I was back in God's country."

"How did you get there?"

"Let me see. Ah, yes! I stood on the terrace, looking out over the sea, and observed in the distance the smoke of a steamer. But I don't surely need to follow the thread further, for a person of your intelligence."

"No, but you perceive that you can't possess a thought that hasn't its ancestry lying behind it, any more than you can get from the moonlight here to the shadow there by the cliffs without leaving footprints to show the way you went. Now, when you stood at the baccarat table this evening, what made you think of the little Professor?"

"My dear chap," said Underhill, "you make me tired. There is such a thing as pressing a point too far. And, since you were good enough to call my attention to the fact that the cliff throws a shadow, I'm going to extinguish your Socratic questionings by walking in it. Buona sera!"

He rounded a spur of cliff, keeping close to its base.

Rh