However when all had taken as much tea and cakes and marrons glaces as they cared for—­David was so shy that he had only one cup of tea and one piece of tea-cake—­the large group broke up into five smaller ones.  The few gradually converged, and dropping all nonsense discussed biology like good ’uns, David listening eager-eyed and enthralled at the marvels just beginning to peep out of the dissecting and vivisecting rooms and chemical laboratories in the opening years of the Twentieth century.  Then one by one they all departed; but as David was going too Rossiter detained him by a kindly pressure on the arm—­a contact which sent a half-pleasant, half-disagreeable thrill through his nerves.

“Don’t hurry away unless you really are pressed for time.  I want to show you some of my specimens and the place where I work.”

David followed him—­after taking his leave of Mrs. Rossiter who accepted his polite sentences—­a little stammered—­with a slightly pompous acquiescence—­followed him to the library and then through a curtained door down some steps into a great studio-laboratory, provided (behind screens) with washing places, and full of mysteries, with cupboards and shelves and further rooms beyond and a smell of chloride of lime combined with alcoholic preservatives and undefined chemicals.  After a tour round this domain in which David was only slightly interested—­for lack of the right education and imagination—­so far he—­or—­she had only the mind of a mathematician—­Rossiter led him back into the library, drew out chairs, indicated cigarettes—­even whiskey and soda if he wanted it—­David declined—­and then began to say what was at the back of his mind:—­

“We met first in the train, the South Wales Express, you remember?  I fancy you told me then that you had been in South Africa, in this bungled war, and had been either wounded or ill in some way.  In fact you went so far as to say you had had ‘necrosis of the jaw,’ a thing I politely doubted because whatever it was it has left no perceptible scar.  Of course it’s damned impertinent of me to cross-examine you at all, or to ask why you went to and why you left South Africa.  But I don’t mind confessing you inspire me with a good deal of interest.

“Now the other day—­as you know—­I made the acquaintance of your father in Wales—­at Pontystrad.  I told him I had shown a young fellow some of those Gower caves and how his name was—­like your father’s, ‘Williams.’  Of course we soon came to an understanding.  Then your father spoke of you in high praise.  What a delightful nature was yours, how considerate and kind you were—­don’t blush, though I admit it becomes you—­Well you can pretty well guess how he went on.  But what interested me particularly was his next admission:  how different you were as a lad—­rather more than the ordinary wild oats—­eh?  And how completely an absence in South Africa had changed you.  You must forgive my cheek in dissecting your character