nd upon all sorts of
pretexts, now smoking with him in the library and discussing things
ecclesiastical, now following him into the laboratory, to hang above
the trays of cultures, or the charts of perverse fever cases, while the
doctor expounded and predicted, laying down the law with voice and fist
and trenchant word. He saw Olive, as a rule, when he was passing in and
out. Sometimes they merely nodded from afar, sometimes they had a
little conversation. It was always as immaterial as possible, yet it
never failed to have a little flavour of personal and friendly
understanding.

Next to the absent-minded and erratic doctor, Brenton's loyalty was
given to Professor Opdyke. At the very first, the consciousness that
the gray-haired professor was father to his old-time idol had made all
the difference; but, after a time, that fact sank into insignificance
beside the personality of the man himself. Never was any artist more
devoted to his medium, whether that medium were water colours or
progressive harmonies, than was Professor Opdyke to his balances and
his blow-pipes, to his effervescent mixtures and to his most unholy
smells. His laboratory was his studio, a place apart from all the
outside world, the threshold where he was content to stand and knock,
waiting in perfect, reverential patience until the mysterious door
ahead of him should open just a very little wider. To the outward eye,
he was languid, indifferent, a little cynical and prone to boredom.
Underneath it, though, the fires of his enthusiasm, of his ambition to
advance, not his own career, but the sum total of scientific knowledge:
this fire was burning at white heat. Indeed, it cost him something to
bank down the flame upon the side of his nature which lay open to the
general view. His somewhat cynical humour was the material which he
selected for the banking.

Professor Opdyke almost never was betrayed into the sin of talking
shop. Upon the rare occasions that he gave himself the privilege, save
to his classes, he insisted upon but one congenial hearer, and that
that one should be with him behind closed doors. More and more often,
as the second winter of his acquaintance with Brenton went on, he chose
Brenton as the one hearer he allowed himself. This was partly by reason
of Brenton's interest in Reed, for, whatever his habit with his chemistry,
it must be confessed that Professor Opdyke talked in season and out
about his son. Partly, too, it came by wa