Kate shivered with sympathy at the woman’s passion, and something like envy stirred in her.  Here was a world of delight and torment of which she knew nothing, and beside it her own existence, restless and eager though it had been, seemed a meager affair.

“Well, the idea burned in me for months and years.  But I hid it.  No one guessed anything about it.  Certainly David knew nothing of it.  Then, when I was beginning on my graduate work, I was with him daily.  But he never seemed to see me—­he saw only my work, and he seldom praised that.  He expected it to be well done.  As for me, I was satisfied.  The mere fact that we were comrades, forced to think of the same matters several hours of each day, contented me.  I couldn’t imagine what life would be away from him; and I was afraid to think of him in relation to myself.”

“Afraid?”

“Afraid—­I mean just that.  I knew others thought him a genius in relation to his work.  But I knew he was a genius in regard to life.  I felt sure that, if he turned that intensity of his upon life instead of upon science, he would be a destructive force—­a high explosive.  This idea of mine was confirmed in time.  It happened one evening when a number of us were over in the Scammon Garden listening to the out-of-door players.  I grew tired of sitting and slipped from my seat to wander about a little in the darkness.  I had reached the very outer edge of seats and was standing there enjoying the garden, when I overheard two persons talking together.  A man said:  ’Fulham will go far if he doesn’t meet a woman.’  ‘Nonsense,’ the woman said; ’he’s an anchorite.’  ‘An inflammatory one,’ the man returned.  ’Mind, I don’t say he knows it.  Probably he thinks he’s cast for the scientific role to the end of his days, but I know the fellow better than he does himself.  I tell you, if a woman of power gets hold of him, he’ll be as drunk as Abelard with the madness of it.  Over in Europe they allow for that sort of thing.  They let a man make an art of loving.  Here they insist that it shall be incidental.  But Fulham won’t care about conventionalities if the idea ever grips him.  He’s born for love, and it’s a lucky thing for the University that he hasn’t found it out.’  ’We ought to plan a sane and reasonable marriage for him,’ said the woman.  ’Wouldn’t that be a good compromise?’ ‘It would be his salvation,’ the man said.”

Honora poured the words out with such rapidity that Kate hardly could follow her.

“How you remember it all!” broke in Kate.

“If I remember anything, wouldn’t it be that?  As I say, it confirmed me in what I already had guessed.  I felt fierce to protect him.  My jealousy was awake in me.  I watched him more closely than ever.  His daring in the laboratory grew daily.  He talked openly about matters that other men were hardly daring to dream of, and his brain seemed to expand every day like some strange plant under calcium rays.  I thought what a frightful loss to science it would be if the wilder qualities of his nature got the upper hand, and I wondered how I could endure it if—­”