his beautiful scientific precision--as
if he'd been preparing a slide--the details of a country walk he and she
had taken the day before he left. It began with grade-crossings, and I
simply couldn't imagine what he was getting at. It wasn't his business
to fight grade-crossings--though they might be a very pretty symbol for
the kind of thing he was fighting, tooth and nail, all the time. I
couldn't seem to see it, at first; but finally it came out. There was a
grade-crossing, with a 'Look out for the Engine' sign, and there was a
tow-headed infant in rags. They had noticed the infant before. It had
bandy legs and granulated eyelids, and seemed to be dumb. It had started
them off on eugenics. She was very keen on the subject; Ferguson, being
a big scientist, had some reserves. It was a real argument.

"Then everything happened at once. Tow-head with the sore eyes rocked
onto the track simultaneously with the whistle. They were about fifty
yards off. Ferguson sprinted back down the hill, the girl screaming
pointlessly meanwhile. There was just time--you'll have to take my word
for this; Ferguson explained it all to me in the most meticulous detail,
but I can't repeat that masterpiece of exposition--for Ferguson to
decide. To decide again, you understand, precisely as he had decided on
the _Argentina_. Rotten luck, wasn't it? He could just have flung
tow-head out of the way by getting under the engine himself. He grabbed
for tow-head, but he didn't roll onto the track. So tow-head was killed.
If he had got there ten seconds earlier, he could have done the trick.
He was ten seconds too late to save both Ferguson and tow-head. So--once
more--he saved Ferguson. Do you get the situation?"

"I should say I did!" shouted Chantry. "Twice in a man's life--good
Lord! I hope you walked out of his house at that point."

"I didn't. I was very much interested. And by the way, Chantry, if
Ferguson had given his life for tow-head, you would have been the first
man to write a pleasant little article for some damned highbrow review,
to prove that it was utterly wrong that Ferguson should have exchanged
his life for that of a little Polish defective. I can even see you
talking about the greatest good of the greatest number. You would have
loved the paradox of it; the mistaken martyr, self-preservation the
greatest altruism, and all the rest of it. But because Ferguson did
exactly what you would have said in your article that he ought to h