ey eyes--Bindon, the professor of
botany, who came up from Kew for January and February--came in by the
lecture theatre door, and passed, rubbing his hands together and smiling,
in silent affability down the laboratory.

* * * * *

In the subsequent six weeks Hill experienced some very rapid and curiously
complex emotional developments. For the most part he had Wedderburn in
focus--a fact that Miss Haysman never suspected. She told Hill (for in the
comparative privacy of the museum she talked a good deal to him of
socialism and Browning and general propositions) that she had met
Wedderburn at the house of some people she knew, and "he's inherited his
cleverness; for his father, you know, is the great eye-specialist."

"_My_ father is a cobbler," said Hill, quite irrelevantly, and
perceived the want of dignity even as he said it. But the gleam of
jealousy did not offend her. She conceived herself the fundamental source
of it. He suffered bitterly from a sense of Wedderburn's unfairness, and a
realisation of his own handicap. Here was this Wedderburn had picked up a
prominent man for a father, and instead of his losing so many marks on the
score of that advantage, it was counted to him for righteousness! And
while Hill had to introduce himself and talk to Miss Haysman clumsily over
mangled guinea-pigs in the laboratory, this Wedderburn, in some backstairs
way, had access to her social altitudes, and could converse in a polished
argot that Hill understood perhaps, but felt incapable of speaking. Not,
of course, that he wanted to. Then it seemed to Hill that for Wedderburn
to come there day after day with cuffs unfrayed, neatly tailored,
precisely barbered, quietly perfect, was in itself an ill-bred, sneering
sort of proceeding. Moreover, it was a stealthy thing for Wedderburn to
behave insignificantly for a space, to mock modesty, to lead Hill to fancy
that he himself was beyond dispute the man of the year, and then suddenly
to dart in front of him, and incontinently to swell up in this fashion. In
addition to these things, Wedderburn displayed an increasing disposition
to join in any conversational grouping that included Miss Haysman, and
would venture, and indeed seek occasion, to pass opinions derogatory to
socialism and atheism. He goaded Hill to incivilities by neat, shallow,
and exceedingly effective personalities about the socialist leaders,
until Hill hated Bernard Shaw's graceful eg