nd
scalpel, probe and microtome, and the utmost of their skill and care,
making now and then a raid into the compact museum of illustration next
door, in which specimens and models and directions stood in disciplined
ranks, under the direction of the demonstrator Capes. There was a couple
of blackboards at each end of the aisle of tables, and at these Capes,
with quick and nervous speech that contrasted vividly with Russell's
slow, definitive articulation, directed the dissection and made
illuminating comments on the structures under examination. Then he
would come along the laboratory, sitting down by each student in
turn, checking the work and discussing its difficulties, and answering
questions arising out of Russell's lecture.

Ann Veronica had come to the Imperial College obsessed by the
great figure of Russell, by the part he had played in the Darwinian
controversies, and by the resolute effect of the grim-lipped, yellow,
leonine face beneath the mane of silvery hair. Capes was rather a
discovery. Capes was something superadded. Russell burned like a beacon,
but Capes illuminated by darting flashes and threw light, even if it
was but momentary light, into a hundred corners that Russell left
steadfastly in the shade.

Capes was an exceptionally fair man of two or three-and-thirty, so
ruddily blond that it was a mercy he had escaped light eyelashes, and
with a minor but by no means contemptible reputation of his own. He
talked at the blackboard in a pleasant, very slightly lisping voice with
a curious spontaneity, and was sometimes very clumsy in his exposition,
and sometimes very vivid. He dissected rather awkwardly and hurriedly,
but, on the whole, effectively, and drew with an impatient directness
that made up in significance what it lacked in precision. Across the
blackboard the colored chalks flew like flights of variously tinted
rockets as diagram after diagram flickered into being.

There happened that year to be an unusual proportion of girls and women
in the advanced laboratory, perhaps because the class as a whole was an
exceptionally small one. It numbered nine, and four of these were women
students. As a consequence of its small size, it was possible to get
along with the work on a much easier and more colloquial footing than
a larger class would have permitted. And a custom had grown up of a
general tea at four o'clock, under the auspices of a Miss Garvice, a
tall and graceful girl of distinguished i