"I'm not so sure of that." The doctor chuckled. "I am a trustee, you know."
"Then he'll resign."
"Not a bit of it. He may threaten it, may talk grand and elevated nonsense concerning freedom of speech and all the rest of it. When it comes to resignation, though, he will draw in his horns. His life is in that laboratory of yours."
"And in his students?"
"No. There's the trouble. It's the idea itself he's after, not its growing grip upon the world at large."
"Then what makes him——" The professor paused for the fitting word.
The doctor supplied it, and remorselessly.
"Explatterate? Because it's a part of him to talk forth his imaginings, and, just at the present hour, he lacks all proper outlet but his class. Something has gone bad inside the man; no wonder, though, when one thinks of all that he has gone through. Even you, Opdyke, will never know the worst of that. Still, we shall have to put some sort of brake upon him; he can't go on like this."
For a little while, the professor smoked in silence.
"Can't you warn him unofficially, Keltridge?" he asked then.