He turned to me.
“Lend me a ha’penny,” said he.
I gave him the only one I had and he set to work to draw the most beautiful circles, though they had but little relation to A as their centre and B as their circumference, which were the letters he had written at each end of his given finite straight line.
“Nevertheless, that’ll do,” said he.
And then, forthwith, he began to prove it to her.
I went out to get myself a cigar in the dining-room, and while there, cutting off the end of it and smiling gently to myself as I did so, I heard the voice of Cruikshank raised in the passion of despair.
“My God! my dear child,” I heard him say. “I proved those two were equal because they both came from the centre of this circle—B.F.G. to the circumference. You don’t remember anything.”
I lit my cigar with a trembling hand. Then I walked to the window of the dining-room and looked out into the garden. There were the tom-tits pecking away at the cocoa-nut shell which Bellwattle had hung up with such infinite trouble; there were the kittens, lapping from a saucer of milk as Bellwattle and their mother had taught them; there were the sweet peas in great walls of colour with the old pieces of red flannel still clinging to the pea-sticks, those same pieces of flannel which Bellwattle had tied to keep off the birds when the shoots were young and green; there was the little robin which Bellwattle fed every afternoon at tea-time; there, in fact, were all the signs of Bellwattle’s beautiful and wonderful and practical utility.
I came back into the other room at the sound of Cruikshank’s voice as he called me.
“She sees it!” he exclaimed in an ecstasy. “She understands it all right. I made it clear, didn’t I, Bellwattle?”