"He then let off two barrels in the air, which the Professor endured with singular firmness, and then said, `But don't fire them all off.'
"`Why not' asked the other buoyantly.
"`Keep them,' asked his companion, `for the next man you meet who talks as we were talking.'
"It was at this moment that Smith, looking down, perceived apoplectic terror upon the face of the Sub-Warden, and heard the refined shriek with which he summoned the porter and the ladder.
"It took Dr. Eames some little time to disentangle himself from the ladder,and some little time longer to disentangle himself from the Sub-Warden. But as soon as he could do so unobtrusively, he rejoined his companion in the late extraordinary scene.
He was astonished to find the gigantic Smith heavily shaken, and sitting with his shaggy head on his hands. When addressed, he lifted a very pale face.
"`Why, what is the matter?' asked Eames, whose own nerves had by this time twittered themselves quiet, like the morning birds.
"`I must ask your indulgence,' said Smith, rather brokenly.
`I must ask you to realize that I have just had an escape from death.'
"`YOU have had an escape from death?' repeated the Professor in not unpardonable irritation. `Well, of all the cheek--'
"`Oh, don't you understand, don't you understand?' cried the pale young man impatiently. `I had to do it, Eames,; I had to prove you wrong or die.
When a man's young, he nearly always has some one whom he thinks the top-water mark of the mind of man--some one who knows all about it, if anybody knows.
"`Well, you were that to me; you spoke with authority, and not as the scribes. Nobody could comfort me if YOU said there was no comfort. If you really thought there was nothing anywhere, it was because you had been there to see.
Don't you see that I HAD to prove you didn't really mean it?-- or else drown myself in the canal.'
"`Well,' said Eames hesitatingly, `I think perhaps you confuse--'
"`Oh, don't tell me that!' cried Smith with the sudden clairvoyance of mental pain; `don't tell me I confuse enjoyment of existence with the Will to Live! That's German, and German is High Dutch, and High Dutch is Double Dutch. The thing I saw shining in your eyes when you dangled on that bridge was enjoyment of life "the Will to Live." What you knew when you sat on that damned gargoyle was that the world, when all is said and done, is a wonderful and beautiful place; I know it, because I knew it at the same minute.
I saw the gray clouds turn pink, and the little gilt clock in the crack between the houses. It was THOSE things you hated leaving, not Life, whatever that is. Eames, we've been to the brink of death together; won't you admit I'm right?'
"`Yes, said Eames very slowly, `I think you are right.
You shall have a First!'
"`Right!' cried Smith, springing up reanimated. `I've passed with honours, and now let me go and see about being sent down.'
"`You needn't be sent down,' said Eames with the quiet confidence of twelve years of intrigue. `Everything with us comes from the man on top to the people just round him:
I am the man on top, and I shall tell the people round me the truth.'
