One's own life gets a little unreal...until a thing like this happens..."

"I have never felt that," replied Joliffe thoughtfully.

"No? A remarkably clear brain," agreed the other with simple admiration. "I've noticed how you never lose grip on things. That's why you've been so successful with Edmund. But really, for myself, I confess that a—a revelation of this kind—what the loss of Edmund would mean—the sort of man you really are—wakes me up, puts everything clearly."

"I don't see that the fact that I rescued Edmund, in the most ordinary way, reveals the sort of man I am."

"But that kind of prompt action isn't expected of—of our type, Joliffe. It's most unusual; the Doctor said so."

"I don't think Dr. Jones knows very much."

"No, but I agreed with what he meant. And it is settled about the book."

Professor Awkwright felt very content for the rest of that day; the sense of the absurdity of the accident, the irritating, disturbing excitement had passed away. Edmund came down to tea and the household was stolidly normal again; but the Professor continued, as he had himself put it, "to see clearly"—the vast value of Joliffe, for instance, and Edmund's inarticulate and pathetic affection for him, and the very agreeable intimacy that bound them all together; it was surprising how fond he was himself of the unattractive, slightly "mental" youth; why, he believed that if Edmund had really been killed the shock would have prevented him from finishing the book.

When the two men settled down in the study that evening after Edmund had gone to bed Professor Awkwright felt that their relationship had subtly changed; never had they been so intimate, never so frank, as if there was no possibility of any misunderstanding or irritation between them.

Joliffe seemed to "let himself go" intellectually; his usually respectful, almost timid manner mellowed, he was more candid, more brilliant, slightly, though quite unmistakably, different, Awkwright thought, from his habitual self.

One of Mrs. Carter's most tempting dinners had celebrated Edmund's escape; there had been good wine and afterwards, contrary to custom, good brandy.

Perhaps it was the brandy that stimulated the Professor's added sense of clarity, of which he had been aware all day; a most temperate man, he had always, on the few occasions when he had drunk liberally, been teased as to the right naming of his heightened perceptions. Did alcohol give everything an air of caricature, or did it allow you to see everything as it really was?

Was it, for instance, just excitement and then the brandy that made him think what a queer fellow Joliffe was?—or had he, Awkwright, always had his head so in the air that he had never before observed the strangeness of his constant companion? Joliffe sat a little more at his ease than he had ever sat before; a very tall, stiff, long-legged man, with an odd look of being featureless; the only definite object about his face was his glistening spectacles, for the rest a sandy glow seemed to blot out any salient point in his countenance; even his profile seemed to mean nothing; a closer inspection showed his features to be sharp, small and neat, his expression composed and kindly.

He also must have been a little excited that night, also a little stimulated by the occasion and the brandy, for he forgot (to the Professor's amusement) to go up to his room and listen for the wireless news bulletin.

Professor Awkwright had always refused to have wireless, gramophone or telephone; but Joliffe, with meek persistence, had indulged in all in his own room; he had little chance of using any of these inventions and he scrupulously contrived so that they never annoyed the rest of the household; but he liked to "sneak off," as the Professor put it with indulgent irony, to listen to news, a talk, or a concert; but tonight he seemed to have forgotten even the attraction of the evening bulletin which he so seldom missed.

The two elderly men talked of their researches, of the book that was going to bring glory to both, and of the accident of yesterday which the Professor, at least, could by no means dismiss from his mind.

"It was pure impulse," said Joliffe at last; "if I had reflected at all I don't suppose that I should have done it."

"I'm sure that you would."

"No, because I always think that we attach too much importance to human life. And Edmund wouldn't really mind dying; I daresay he'd be better off in another state."

"I didn't know that you had those ideas."

"They aren't ideas. Surely, sir, you don't hold by all the orthodox views—"

"I'd really rather—"

"Oh, the sacredness of human life, et cetera, et cetera?"

"I suppose so, I haven't quite thought it out."

"I have. I can't see, sir, how, after all your researches you can avoid a broader view...look at the East, Russia, Mexico, today—look at the Elizabethans, look at America, at Italy—and how they regard and have regarded death—"

"You don't think it matters—violent death?"

"No. An intelligent man should be able to deal with death—give it, withhold it, accept it, avoid it, according to his reason. The world was more worthwhile when this was so."

"But, my dear Joliffe, to argue like that is to condone murder," Awkwright smiled, very comfortable in his chair, "and suicide."

Joliffe did not reply, he seemed sunk in a pleasing reverie; to rouse him Awkwright said:

"I suppose one gets conventional-minded on these subjects, but I think the West is right in the value put on human life—our violences, our indifferences to right and wrong, our cowardices are nothing, I fear, but manifestations of the hidden ape, still lurking within so many of us, alas!"

Joliffe listened to this speech with closed eyes.

"On the contrary," he declared, "I believe that the hidden ape in me made me rescue Edmund."

"My dear Joliffe, as if apes—"

"They do—animal affection—animal devotion, no reason, no logic. I am fond of Edmund."

"Why?" wondered the Professor rather wistfully.

"One doesn't know. The ape again! The boy never pretends, he is very wise about some things, has extraordinary instincts! I believe I understand him as no one else ever will."

Joliffe sat up suddenly. He was smiling, his small eyes looked yellow behind the glasses, his movement seemed to dismiss the subject; they each drank some more brandy and began to discuss the book; but this speedily brought them to the same point; Joliffe remarked on the beauty of some of the Minoan seals he had been copying the very morning of the accident, and Awkwright's comment was that the artist who designed them had an evil mind.

"Why?" challenged the tutor with his new freedom.

"Well, they are evil. The Minoans were, it is acknowledged—cruel; consider their bull-leaping sports—no soul..."

"Nonsense!" Never had Joliffe expressed himself so boldly to his employer; he seemed really excited, "They were simply too civilized to put so much value on individual life—"

"The hidden ape wasn't hidden, you mean?" smiled Awkwright.

They argued keenly and at length, remaining in the study long after their usual hour for retiring; to Awkwright it was an entirely academical discussion, but Joliffe seemed to throw more and more feeling into it until he was making quite a personal point of his contention that no civilized people would consider murder a crime.

The Professor did not know how they had got to this subject; it was strange how the accident seemed to have thrown both a little out of their stride, a little off their balance; even Awkwright felt the mental atmosphere becoming distasteful, an unpleasant sense of unreality obscured the familiar cosy room; he wished that Joliffe would not talk so much, so at random (and he had never wished that before). He roused himself out of a disagreeable lethargy to say, with a rather false attempt at authority:

"This sort of stuff is really absurd from a man like you, Joliffe." The tutor rose and stood in front of the fire; his attitude was dogmatic, his habitual featurelessness seemed to have developed into a face that Awkwright did not recognize.

"Pardon me, my dear sir, how do you know what kind of man I am?"

"We have been intimate for eight years."

"But I know you much better than you know me."

"I don't agree.

"Well, what do you know of me? You said yourself that what I did yesterday surprised you."

"But—"

Joliffe talked him down.

"You've always accepted me on my face value, you just met me through an agency. I had excellent credentials and you were quite satisfied. You never asked me why I had no relations, no friends, why I never wanted a holiday—"

"My dear Joliffe," interrupted the Professor testily, "don't try to make yourself out a mysterious person. I know you as just a solitary scholar like myself, one who happens to have drifted away from his relatives and not cared to make friends; come, come, this is all really rather childish."

"Is it?" Joliffe peered over his glasses down on the little man in the chair, his face was sharpened by what seemed a queer vanity. "So you think that you know me through and through?"

"My dear fellow, of course I do."

"Well, to begin with, my name isn't Samuel Joliffe."

The Professor tried to smile; he thought this was a joke, but it was certainly a stupid, vulgar joke, and he wished that the tutor, who must really be a little drunk, would be quiet and go up to bed.

"Do you remember the Hammerton case—ten years ago?" demanded Joliffe.

"As if I ever took the slightest interest—"

"No, I thought you didn't. Well, it was the case of a man, an educated man of means, well-connected, intelligent, being tried for the murder of his wife. The usual arsenic from weed-killer."

"I do recall something—Hammerton was acquitted, wasn't he?"

"Yes. But no one thought he was innocent; the jury just gave him the benefit of a very small doubt. A "not proven" it would have been in Scotland. He was ruined—he had to disappear."

"But I don't see what all this has got to do with anything—"

"Wait a minute. Though everyone thought Hammerton was guilty, everyone had a secret sympathy with him."

"Morbid sentimentality."

"No, his wife was such an awful woman, she nagged and whined and pestered and was always sickly, and he was a very decent fellow; he just wanted peace and quiet, and then, perhaps, one day she went too far even for his patience—"

"And the hidden ape leaped up in him? A very usual case—"

"Not at all. Perhaps he used his reason and removed a worthless, tiresome, repulsive creature—"

"If he did he was a murderer," snapped the Professor. "And, since he was acquitted, we have no right to assume that."

He rose, hoping to silence Joliffe, but the tutor leaned forward, took him by the lapel of the coat, and said with a smile: "I am Hammerton."

The little Professor twisted and squealed in grotesque (through it all he felt all was grotesque) horror.

"No," he cried, "no, we've both had too much to drink and it's time we went to bed."

But the tutor did not release his calm, steady grasp on the other's lapel.

"A man of your intelligence, sir," he said gently, "should not find my information so surprising, I merely gave it to prove a point; it can't possibly make any difference to our relationship."

"Of course you were acquitted, but, but it is very terrible, very unfortunate.