“‘He can’t go alone.’ Her voice was just a whisper. She was shocked to the core of her, and I saw that, to that extent at least, they had had it out. I was sorry for her then--sorry without regard to my fast-ebbing admiration. She had been flung on the horns of a dilemma, and they were goring her cruelly. They couldn’t, poor devils, get peace with honor.” Hoyting ordered more vermouth, and lighted the next of the undiminishing procession of cigarettes. He wandered away from the actual story for a little, and I let him, knowing that in the end he would get his fox and goose and bag of corn all safe across, like the man in the riddle. “Dorrien wasn’t the sort of man you’d expect to find in scientific research. He was too human, too impressionable. A scientist oughtn’t to notice Javanese singing girls. They ought to be to him as the female of the flounder. I don’t mean for a minute that Dorrien was a cad, that he was anything but--complete. He was a scientist of sorts, at least by predilection; but he was also healthy and immensely masculine. He couldn’t personify Science and then treat her as if she were really a woman. He knew the difference. I’ve seen men who didn’t. They are the lucky ones. Dorrien was unlucky: he had no end of conflicting desires. He wanted abnormal conditions _plus_ a normal life; and he wanted a little fame thrown in. I dare say he also wanted Mrs. Dorrien and the little girl whose teeth had to be straightened. Just at that moment, he thought he wanted more than all the rest a chance to do his appointed work. But he was honest, damn him! honest. He knew that Science could never, for him, be a mistress, and he wasn’t a man to exist on merely Platonic relations. I’ve always admired him for not blinking facts when he must have been sorely tempted to. But what they must have gone through, of bitter exposition, those two, in the days of my absence! I didn’t see any way out of it. He wanted incompatible goods. And so, by heavens! did she.” Hoyting dropped his chin on his chest and closed his eyes wearily for a moment.