is not everything, I know. Still I contend
that, given your powers, you would be far more useful in the world with
sympathy, affection for your kind, added to them than as you are. I
believe even that you would do still more splendid work."

The Professor poured himself out another glass of claret.

"You noticed my butler?" he said.

"I did."

"He's a perfect servant. He makes me perfectly comfortable. Yet he has
no feeling of liking for me. I treat him civilly. I pay him well. But I
never think about him, or concern myself with him as a human being. I
know nothing of his character except what I read of it in his last
master's letter. There are, you may say, no truly human relations
between us. You would affirm that his work would be better done if I had
made him personally like me as man--of any class--can like man--of any
other class?"

"I should, decidedly."

"I contend that he couldn't do his work better than he does it at
present."

"But if any crisis occurred?"

"What?"

"Any crisis, change in your condition. If you needed his help, not only
as a man and a butler, but as a man and a brother? He'd fail you then,
probably. You would never get from your servant that finest service
which can only be prompted by an honest affection."

"You have finished?"

"Quite."

"Let us go upstairs then. Yes, those are good prints. I picked them up
in Birmingham when I was living there. This is my workroom."

They came into a double room lined entirely with books, and brilliantly,
rather hardly, lit by electricity. The windows at one end looked on to
the Park, at the other on to the garden of a neighbouring house. The
door by which they entered was concealed from the inner and smaller room
by the jutting wall of the outer room, in which stood a huge
writing-table loaded with letters, pamphlets and manuscripts. Between
the two windows of the inner room was a cage in which a large, grey
parrot was clambering, using both beak and claws to assist him in his
slow and meditative peregrinations.

"You have a pet," said the Father, surprised.

"I possess a parrot," the Professor answered, drily, "I got him for a
purpose when I was making a study of the imitative powers of birds, and
I have never got rid of him. A cigar?"

"Thank you."

They sat down. Father Murchison glanced at the parrot. It had paused in
its journey, and, clinging to the bars of its cage, was regarding them
with attentive round eyes that looked de