“Certainly not,” Archie broke in. “But there’s a question of taste, of delicacy, involved in the case that can’t be decided on abstract principles. We know as well as you that my father meant the laboratory and the lectureship to serve the ends of science, at whatever cost to his own special convictions; what we feel--and you don’t seem to--is that you’re the last man to put them to that use; and I don’t want to remind you why.” A slight redness rose through Dredge’s sallow skin. “You needn’t,” he said. “It’s because he pulled me out of my hole, woke me up, made me, shoved me off from the shore. Because he saved me ten or twenty years of muddled effort, and put me where I am at an age when my best working years are still ahead of me. Every one knows that’s what your father did for me, but I’m the only person who knows the time and trouble that it took.” It was well said, and I glanced quickly at Archie, who was never closed to generous emotions. “Well, then--?” he said, flushing also. “Well, then,” Dredge continued, his voice deepening and losing its nasal edge, “I had to pay him back, didn’t I?” The sudden drop flung Archie back on his prepared attitude of irony. “It would be the natural inference--with most men.” “Just so. And I’m not so very different. I knew your father wanted a successor--some one who’d try and tie up the loose ends. And I took the lectureship with that object.” “And you’re using it to tear the whole fabric to pieces!” Dredge paused to re-light his pipe. “Looks that way,” he conceded. “This year anyhow.” “_ This year_--?” Archie gasped at him. “Yes. When I took up the job I saw it just as your father left it. Or rather, I didn’t see any other way of going on with it. The change came gradually, as I worked.” “Gradually? So that you had time to look round you, to know where you were, to see you were fatally committed to undoing the work he had done?” “Oh, yes--I had time,” Dredge conceded. “And yet you kept the chair and went on with the course?” Dredge refilled his pipe, and then turned in his seat so that he looked squarely at Archie. “What would your father have done in my place?” he asked. “In your place--?” “Yes: supposing he’d found out the things I’ve found out in the last year or two. You’ll see what they are, and how much they count, if you’ll run over the report of the lectures. If your father’d been alive he might have come across the same facts just as easily.” There was a silence which Archie at last broke by saying: “But he didn’t, and you did. There’s the difference.” “The difference? What difference? Would your father have suppressed the facts if he’d found them? It’s _you_ who insult his memory by implying it! And if I’d brought them to him, would he have used his hold over me to get me to suppress them?” “Certainly not. But can’t you see it’s his death that makes the difference? He’s not here to defend his case.”