A purfect evening he repeated plucking gently at the threads of the table cloth. He would never originate a remark or ask a question except of patients or an engineer standing near some difficult machinery. He knew everything by just being about. He was head and shoulders above the other three. Delicate, of gentle blood and narrow fragile body; a strong spirit; impossible of approach by speech; everything she said would carry her away from him; perhaps he was already planning his escape. One day he would suddenly fall down, dead; young and unknown to anyone in the world, carrying away his mystery. "Eleven o'clock." She had shattered the silence he had built. "You don't call that late" said Dr. von Heber released and rushing to rescue her. He sat bland and square and simple beneath the coming long procession of years and days; but his firmly dimpled swift Canadian smile, brilliant with the flash of the flawless perfect arch of his strong even teeth brought past and future into the moment, giving them to the sudden charm of this meeting, referring back to that first evening by the table. "Oh no; it's frightfully early." "That's a most delightful hyperbole." "I shall summons you for calling me an isosceles triangle." Dr. Wayneflete laughed too ... a small sound drowned by Dr. Hurd's thwack on the arm of his chair as he flung back his head for his laugh. "It _has_ been wonderful to-day, don't you _think_? Did you see the extraordinary light this afternoon?" "Well no; we were all of us immured, but we were out this evening; we thought it the best specimen of London weather we'd struck so far." "There's nothing whatever the matter with London weather. It's _perfect_; the most perfect in the world." Dr. Hurd resumed his shakings of laughter, restrained to listen. Dr. Winchester was sitting bent forward smiling dreamily. "I know you won't like me to call that a hyperbole, but you won't quite expect me to say I unreservedly agree." "It isn't a question of agreement or disagreement. It's a simple fact." Dr. Hurd again struck his chair and sat forward feeling for a handkerchief in a side pocket, his face a tearful grin turned upon Dr. von Heber. "You are a loyal champion." "English weather does not want a champion. It's so wonderful. Perhaps you are thinking of Italian skies and that sort of thing; in countries where the weather does not change or not suddenly; only at fixed seasons. That's very nice in a way. You can make plans. But I know I should long for grey days and changes in the sky. A grey day is not melancholy; it's exciting. You can see everything. The sun makes everything pale and blinds you." "There I think you mistaken. Nothing beautifies like sunlight, and if you've the sun behind you, you get the ahead prospect without being blinded."