"Did he find out?" she asked, deeply interested.
"Yes," said Jones, displaying mild symptoms of enthusiasm, "he discovered that I was fairly swarming with a perfectly new and undescribed species of bacillus. That bacillus," he added, with modest diffidence, "is now named after me."
She looked at him very earnestly, dropped her blue eyes, raised them again after a moment:
"It must be—pleasant—to give one's name to a bacillus."
"It is an agreeable and exciting privilege. When I look into the culture tubes I feel an intimate relationship with those bacilli which I have never felt for any human being."[34]
"You—you are a——" she hesitated, with a slight but charming colour in her cheeks, "a naturalist, I presume?" And she added hastily, "No doubt you are a famous one, and my question must sound ignorant and absurd to you. But as I do not know your name——"
"It is Jones," he said gloomily, "—and I am not famous."
"Mine is Cecil Cassillis; and neither am I," she said. "But I thought when naturalists gave their names to butterflies and microbes that everything concerned immediately became celebrated."
Jones smiled; and she thought his expression very attractive.
"No," he said, "fame crowns the man who, celebrated only for his wealth, names hotels, tug-boats, and art galleries after himself. Thus are Immortals made."