He shook his head doubtfully. "I couldn't say—it's not mine, you know. One of Hensler's—he's our best biology man. I don't know what it is exactly that he's doing at present—some sort of research work, no doubt. The cats and rats are all his—I've only got the mice."
"And all they have to do," I said, anxious at any cost to reduce the tension of the atmosphere, "is to feed well and propagate their species. You can't really call them unlucky."
But she said nothing; she didn't even smile. And then, by the very greatest of good fortune, he had to rush away to a six o'clock lecture. We hadn't expected she would stay so long, and when the hour came he made rather abrupt apologies and left her in my charge. Her good-bye, as she shook hands with him, was hardly audible.
VI
We went back to his room, Mrs. Severn and I, and sat by the fire. She brought the cat with her, and all the while we were talking it sat on her knee and purred contentedly. After I had offered her a cigarette and lit it for her, she asked suddenly: "Do you think you understand him?"
"I certainly don't think I do," I answered. "But I've been wondering all the time if you did."
"Why me?"
"Because he tells you more in five minutes than he'd tell me in five years."
She half smiled. "That's true. In some ways I can twist him round my little finger.... But in other ways he's just rock—solid rock—don't you feel that?" She caressed the cat and went on: "I'm not a sentimentalist. I don't believe it's a sin to experiment on animals if by doing so you have a chance of benefiting human lives, and I'm not so absurd as to believe that vivisectors are all sadists. So it isn't anything to do with that.... But, all the same, I feel that he's not human. I don't mean that he's inhuman. I mean that he's just unhuman—the humanity in him hasn't ever yet been stirred. He just lives for that high ideal—at two hundred a year. It's splendid, I know, but from a woman's point of view, at any rate, it's just a shade unsatisfactory."
"I don't suppose he ever considers the woman's point of view."