, why didn't you _tell_ me?" His voice sank to a
reproachful solemnity, and he pushed forward his own arm-chair.

The Professor dropped into it with a chuckle. "And miss the joy of
letting you find out?"

"Well--it _was_ a joy." Harviss held out a box of his best cigars. "I
don't know when I've had a bigger sensation. It was so deucedly
unexpected--and, my dear fellow, you've brought it so exactly to the
right shop."

"I'm glad to hear you say so," said the Professor modestly.

Harviss laughed in rich appreciation. "I don't suppose you had a doubt
of it; but of course I was quite unprepared. And it's so
extraordinarily out of your line--"

The Professor took off his glasses and rubbed them with a slow smile.

"Would you have thought it so--at college?"

Harviss stared. "At college?--Why, you were the most iconoclastic
devil--"

There was a perceptible pause. The Professor restored his glasses and
looked at his friend. "Well--?" he said simply.

"Well--?" echoed the other, still staring. "Ah--I see; you mean that
that's what explains it. The swing of the pendulum, and so forth. Well,
I admit it's not an uncommon phenomenon. I've conformed myself, for
example; most of our crowd have, I believe; but somehow I hadn't
expected it of you."

The close observer might have detected a faint sadness under the
official congratulation of his tone; but the Professor was too amazed
to have an ear for such fine shades.

"Expected it of me? Expected what of me?" he gasped. "What in heaven do
you think this thing is?" And he struck his fist on the manuscript
which lay between them.

Harviss had recovered his optimistic creases. He rested a benevolent
eye on the document.

"Why, your apologia--your confession of faith, I should call it. You
surely must have seen which way you were going? You can't have written
it in your sleep?"

"Oh, no, I was wide awake enough," said the Professor faintly.

"Well, then, why are you staring at me as if I were _not?"_ Harviss
leaned forward to lay a reassuring hand on his visitor's worn
coat-sleeve. "Don't mistake me, my dear Linyard. Don't fancy there was
the least unkindness in my allusion to your change of front. What is
growth but the shifting of the stand-point? Why should a man be
expected to look at life with the same eyes at twenty and at--our age?
It never occurred to me that you could feel the least delicacy in
admitting that you have come round a little--have fallen into lin