She hesitated. His glance was now, indeed, so wild, so full of frantic eagerness, that it might readily have frightened one older in the world’s ways. To Wyndham, waiting, watching, it occurred that the Professor was like a spider creeping towards its prey. He shuddered.
‘Speak, girl, speak!’ said the Professor. His agitation was intense, and almost beyond control. Here—here to his hand was his chance. Was he to have it at last, or lose it for ever? Wyndham could stand it no longer; he went quickly forward, and, standing between the Professor and the girl, took the former by the shoulders and pushed him gently backwards and out of hearing.
‘If this drug of yours possesses the lifegiving properties you speak of,’ said he sternly, ‘why speak to her of death? Do you honestly believe in this experiment? Or do you fear it—when you suggest this sort of suicide to her?’
‘I fear nothing,’ said the old man. ‘But we are all mortal. We can all err, even in our surest judgments. The very cleverest of us can be deceived. The experiment—though I do not believe it—might fail.’
At the word ‘fail’ he roused.
‘It will not! It cannot!’ he cried, with vehemence. ‘But in the meantime I would give her her chance, too. She shall know the worst that may befall her.’
‘Why not tell her all?’ said the young man anxiously. ‘It’—he hesitated and coloured faintly—‘it would give her her chance perhaps in another world if your experiment failed. It would take from her—in part—the sin of deliberately destroying herself.’
The Professor shrugged his shoulders. He thought it waste of time, this preparing for another world—another Judge.
‘You think, then, that I should tell her?’
‘I do. I think, too,’ said Wyndham strongly, ‘that if your experiment succeeds you should consider yourself indebted to her for ever.’