"What is that for?" Brenton queried, with the utter listlessness of a man whose sole absorption is in himself.
"A variety of reasons, I suspect. To be sure, he himself only declares one: the insistent professional calls on his time from outside: books, magazine articles, lectures, and all that. It is wonderfully good for the college to have a man of his calibre on its list. As a trustee, it is my notion that they'd much better give him anything he happens to want, for fear, if they refuse, he'll go out altogether."
"He wouldn't," Brenton said quickly.
"You never know, in a case like that of Opdyke. He has done grand work; his record here is made and done with. He has outside calls enough to fill up his time to the limit of his strength; he has enough money to carry him in comparative luxury to the end of all things, even if he never—"
"Professor Opdyke is no pot-boiler," Brenton interrupted. "It's not money that he counts; it's the thing itself he's after."
"What thing?" the doctor asked, with seeming carelessness.
Brenton flashed into sudden fire.
"The finishing out his work. The trying to add one little bit to the sum total of permanent knowledge. The kind of thing you do yourself, doctor, once your patients give you time to get away from the trail of their beastly aches and pains."
The doctor eyed his companion with a sort of grim amusement.
"That last phrase sounds suspicious, Brenton," he remarked. "Are you also—"