O'Malley stared at him.
"I don't understand you quite."
"It is this," continued the other, still holding him with his eyes. He said it deliberately. "I have known you for some time, formed-er—an opinion of your type of mind and being—a very rare and curious one, interesting me deeply—"
"I wasn't aware you'd had me under the microscope," O'Malley laughed, but restlessly.
"Though you felt it and resented it—justly, I may say—to the point of sometimes avoiding me—"
"As doctor, scientist," put in O'Malley, while the other, ignoring the interruption, continued in German:—
"I always had the secret hope, as 'doctor and scientist,' let us put it then, that I might one day see you in circumstances that should bring out certain latent characteristics I thought I divined in you. I wished to observe you—your psychical being—under the stress of certain temptations, favorable to these characteristics. Our brief voyages together, though they have so kindly ripened our acquaintance into friendship"—he put his hand again on the other's shoulder smiling, while O'Malley replied with a little nod of agreement—"have, of course, never provided the opportunity I refer to—"
"Ah—!"
"Until now!" the doctor added. "Until now."
Puzzled and interested the Irishman waited for him to go on, but the man of science, who was now a ship's doctor, hesitated. He found it difficult, apparently, to say what was in his thoughts.