“If you will excuse me, professor,” he said.  Mr. Bomford, with a greater show of vigor than he had previously displayed, jumped up and laid his hand upon the young man’s shoulder.  His hard face seemed suddenly to have become the rioting place for evil passions.  His lips were a little parted and his teeth showed unpleasantly.

“Do you mean, young man,” he exclaimed, “that you refuse to join us?”

“That is what I intended to convey,” Burton replied coldly.

“You refuse either to come into our scheme or to give us one of the beans?”

Burton nodded.

“I hold them in trust for myself.”  There was a moment’s silence.  Mr. Bomford seemed to be struggling for words.  The professor was looking exceedingly disappointed.

“Mr. Burton,” he protested, “I cannot help feeling a certain amount of admiration for your point of view, but, believe me, you are entirely in the wrong.  I beg that you will think this matter over.”

“I am sure that it would be useless,” Burton replied.  “Nothing would induce me to change my mind.”

“Nothing?” Mr. Bomford asked, with a peculiar meaning in his tone.

“Nothing?” the professor echoed softly.

Burton withdrew his eyes from the little shadowy vista of garden and looked steadfastly at the two men.  Then his heart began to beat.  He was filled with a sort of terror lest they should say what he felt sure was in their minds.  It was like sacrilege.  It was something unholy.  His eyes had been caught by the flutter of a white gown passing across one of the lighter places of the perfumed darkness.  They had been watching him.  He only prayed that they would not interrupt until he had reached the end of his speech.

“Professor,” he said softly, turning to his host, “there is one thing which I desire so greatly that I would give my life itself for it.  I would give even what you have asked for to-night and be content to leave the world in so much shorter time.  But that one thing I may not ask of you, for in those days of which I have told you, before the wonderful adventure came, I was married.  My wife lives now in Garden Green.  I have also a little boy.  You will forgive me.”

He passed through the open French windows and neither of them made any further attempt to detain him.  Their silence was a little unnatural and from the walk outside he glanced for a moment behind him.  The two men were sitting in exactly the same positions, their faces were turned towards him, and their eyes seemed to be following his movements.  Yet there was a change.  The professor was no longer the absorbed, mildly benevolent man of science.  Mr. Bomford had lost his commonplace expression.  There was a new thing in their faces, something eager, ominous.  Burton felt a sudden depression as he turned away.  He looked with relief at the thin circle of the moon, visible now through the waving elm trees at the bottom of the garden.  He drew in with joy a long breath of the delicious perfume drawn by the night from the silent boughs of the cedar tree.  Resolutely he hurried away from the sight of that ugly little framed picture upon which he had gazed through the open French windows—­the two men on either side of the lamp, watching him.