Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and singlemindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair of the greatest of German Universities.  But the singleness of purpose which had brought him to the same high level as the rich and brilliant Englishman, had caused him in everything outside their work to stand infinitely below him.  He had never found a pause in his studies in which to cultivate the social graces.  It was only when he spoke of his own subject that his face was filled with life and soul.  At other times he was silent and embarrassed, too conscious of his own limitations in larger subjects, and impatient of that small talk which is the conventional refuge of those who have no thoughts to express.

And yet for some years there had been an acquaintanceship which appeared to be slowly ripening into a friendship between these two very different rivals.  The base and origin of this lay in the fact that in their own studies each was the only one of the younger men who had knowledge and enthusiasm enough to properly appreciate the other.  Their common interests and pursuits had brought them together, and each had been attracted by the other’s knowledge.  And then gradually something had been added to this.  Kennedy had been amused by the frankness and simplicity of his rival, while Burger in turn had been fascinated by the brilliancy and vivacity which had made Kennedy such a favourite in Roman society.  I say “had,” because just at the moment the young Englishman was somewhat under a cloud.

A love affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many of his friends.  But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of honour in such matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of shoulders shrugged over the flight of two and the return of one, the general sentiment was probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy rather than of reprobation.

“Look here, Burger,” said Kennedy, looking hard at the placid face of his companion, “I do wish that you would confide in me.”

As he spoke he waved his hand in the direction of a rug which lay upon the floor.

On the rug stood a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have seemed to have come straight from a dustman’s bin, but which a specialist would have speedily recognized as unique of their kind.

The pile of odds and ends in the flat wicker-work basket supplied exactly one of those missing links of social development which are of such interest to the student.  It was the German who had brought them in, and the Englishman’s eyes were hungry as he looked at them.