t mean so very well, he would do infinitely
better. However, he--"

"Is Brenton," the doctor interposed quietly. "What is more, he will be
Brenton till the end of time. He even may get worse, by way of natural
reaction from the strain he was under with his wife. He steadied to
that better than I hoped, steadied to the baby's death, and steadied to
the reproaches she considerately heaped on him for her parting gift."

"Reproaches?"

"Yes. She told him that he was to blame for the whole situation; that,
if he hadn't run amok, she would be jogging contentedly along the path
of ancestral Calvinism. Moreover, the fact that there is more than a
grain of truth in her contention doesn't lessen the sting that it has
left behind. Now, as a natural consequence, the strain over, he is
letting go entirely. He is made like that. Unless we want him to go to
pieces utterly, we shall either have to invoke the aid of circumstance,
or else bring him up with a round turn, ourselves."

"How?" the professor queried flatly. "A man in his position is not
amenable to discipline."

"I'm not so sure of that." The doctor chuckled. "I am a trustee, you
know."

"Then he'll resign."

"Not a bit of it. He may threaten it, may talk grand and elevated
nonsense concerning freedom of speech and all the rest of it. When it
comes to resignation, though, he will draw in his horns. His life is in
that laboratory of yours."

"And in his students?"

"No. There's the trouble. It's the idea itself he's after, not its
growing grip upon the world at large."

"Then what makes him----" The professor paused for the fitting word.

The doctor supplied it, and remorselessly.

"Explatterate? Because it's a part of him to talk forth his imaginings,
and, just at the present hour, he lacks all proper outlet but his
class. Something has gone bad inside the man; no wonder, though, when
one thinks of all that he has gone through. Even you, Opdyke, will
never know the worst of that. Still, we shall have to put some sort of
brake upon him; he can't go on like this."

For a little while, the professor smoked in silence.

"Can't you warn him unofficially, Keltridge?" he asked then.

"That he is disgracing the department?"

"No. That he is wrecking his final chance to amount to anything that's
practical? That, if he holds on here, he must keep within some sort of
limits in the things he says? That, if he lets go this present
opportunity, he'll turn into the wors