The old man went suddenly red. Speed was not prepared for the suddenness of it. Burton exclaimed, hardly coherent in the midst of his indignation: "That's the first time I've bin spoke to like that by a housemaster of Lavery's! Fifty years I've bin 'ere an' neither Mr. Hardacre nor Mr. Lavery ever insulted me to my face! They were gentlemen, they were!" "Get out!" said Speed, rising from his chair quickly. "Get out of here! You're damnably impertinent! Get out!" He approached Burton and Burton did not move. He struck Burton very lightly on the shoulder. The old man stumbled against the side of the table and then fell heavily on to the floor. Speed was passionately frightened. He wondered for the moment if Burton were dead. Then Burton began to groan. Simultaneously the door opened and a party of Juniors entered, ostensibly to make some enquiry or other, but really, as Speed could see, to find out what was happening. "What d'you want?" said Speed, turning on them. "I didn't tell you to come in. Why didn't you knock?" They had the answer ready. "We did knock, sir, and then we heard a noise as if somebody had fallen down and we thought you might be ill, sir." Burton by this time had picked himself up and was shambling out of the room, rather lame in one leg. The days that followed were not easy ones for Speed. He knew he had been wrong. He ought never to have touched Burton. People were saying "Fancy hitting an old man over sixty!" Burton had told everybody about it. The Common-Room knew of it. The school doctor knew of it, because Burton had been up to the Sick-room to have a bruise on his leg attended. Helen knew of it, and Helen rather obviously sided with Burton. "You shouldn't have hit an old man," she said. "I know I shouldn't," replied Speed. "I lost my temper. But can't you see the provocation I had? Am I to put up with a man's impertinence merely because he's old?" "You're getting hard, Kenneth. You used to be kind to people, but you're not kind now. You're _never_ kind now." In his own heart he had to admit that it was true. He had given up being kind. He was hard, ruthless, unmerciful, and God knew why, perhaps. Yet it was all outside, he hoped. Surely he was not hard through and through; surely the old Speed who was kind and gentle and whom everybody liked, surely this old self of his was still there, underneath the hardness that had come upon him lately! He said bitterly: "Yes, I'm getting hard, Helen. It's true. And I don't know the reason." She supplied the answer instantly. "It's because of me," she said quietly. "I'm making you hard. I'm no good for you. You ought to have married somebody else." "No, no!" he protested, vehemently. Then the old routine of argument, protest, persuasion, and reconciliation took place again. III