ess nose well up to show he didn't care.
Providence had sought to console him by giving him a keen eye for the
absurdity of other people. He had a suggestive tongue, and he professed
and practised cowardice to the scandal of all his acquaintances. He was
said never to wash behind his ears, but this report wronged him. There
had been a time when he did not do so, but his mother had won him to a
promise, and now that operation was often the sum of his simple hasty
toilet. His desire to associate himself with Benham was so strong
that it triumphed over a defensive reserve. It enabled him to detect
accessible moments, do inobtrusive friendly services, and above all
amuse his quarry. He not only amused Benham, he stimulated him. They
came to do quite a number of things together. In the language of
schoolboy stories they became "inseparables."

Prothero's first desire, so soon as they were on a footing that enabled
him to formulate desires, was to know exactly what Benham thought he was
up to in crossing a field with a bull in it instead of going round, and
by the time he began to understand that, he had conceived an affection
for him that was to last a lifetime.

"I wasn't going to be bullied by a beast," said Benham.

"Suppose it had been an elephant?" Prothero cried.... "A mad
elephant?... A pack of wolves?"

Benham was too honest not to see that he was entangled. "Well,
suppose in YOUR case it had been a wild cat?... A fierce mastiff?... A
mastiff?... A terrier?... A lap dog?"

"Yes, but my case is that there are limits."

Benham was impatient at the idea of limits. With a faintly malicious
pleasure Prothero lugged him back to that idea.

"We both admit there are limits," Prothero concluded. "But between the
absolutely impossible and the altogether possible there's the region
of risk. You think a man ought to take that risk--" He reflected. "I
think--no--I think NOT."

"If he feels afraid," cried Benham, seeing his one point. "If he feels
afraid. Then he ought to take it...."

After a digestive interval, Prothero asked, "WHY? Why should he?"

The discussion of that momentous question, that Why? which Benham
perhaps might never have dared ask himself, and which Prothero perhaps
might never have attempted to answer if it had not been for the clash of
their minds, was the chief topic of their conversation for many months.
From Why be brave? it spread readily enough to Why be honest? Why be
clean?--all the great w