"I went, as I say. And Ferguson told me, the very first thing, that the engagement was off. He began by cocking his hair a good deal. But he almost lost control of himself. He didn't cock it long: he ruffled it instead, with his hands. I thought he was in a queer state, for he seemed to want to give me, with his beautiful scientific precision--as if he'd been preparing a slide--the details of a country walk he and she had taken the day before he left. It began with grade-crossings, and I simply couldn't imagine what he was getting at. It wasn't his business to fight grade-crossings--though they might be a very pretty symbol for the kind of thing he was fighting, tooth and nail, all the time. I couldn't seem to see it, at first; but finally it came out. There was a grade-crossing, with a 'Look out for the Engine' sign, and there was a tow-headed infant in rags. They had noticed the infant before. It had bandy legs and granulated eyelids, and seemed to be dumb. It had started them off on eugenics. She was very keen on the subject; Ferguson, being a big scientist, had some reserves. It was a real argument. "Then everything happened at once. Tow-head with the sore eyes rocked onto the track simultaneously with the whistle. They were about fifty yards off. Ferguson sprinted back down the hill, the girl screaming pointlessly meanwhile. There was just time--you'll have to take my word for this; Ferguson explained it all to me in the most meticulous detail, but I can't repeat that masterpiece of exposition--for Ferguson to decide. To decide again, you understand, precisely as he had decided on the _Argentina_. Rotten luck, wasn't it? He could just have flung tow-head out of the way by getting under the engine himself. He grabbed for tow-head, but he didn't roll onto the track. So tow-head was killed. If he had got there ten seconds earlier, he could have done the trick. He was ten seconds too late to save both Ferguson and tow-head. So--once more--he saved Ferguson. Do you get the situation?" "I should say I did!" shouted Chantry. "Twice in a man's life--good Lord! I hope you walked out of his house at that point." "I didn't. I was very much interested. And by the way, Chantry, if Ferguson had given his life for tow-head, you would have been the first man to write a pleasant little article for some damned highbrow review, to prove that it was utterly wrong that Ferguson should have exchanged his life for that of a little Polish defective. I can even see you talking about the greatest good of the greatest number. You would have loved the paradox of it; the mistaken martyr, self-preservation the greatest altruism, and all the rest of it. But because Ferguson did exactly what you would have said in your article that he ought to have done, you are in a state of virtuous chill." "I should have written no such article. I don't see how you can be so flippant."