had seemed to him like a tower in a dream.
As he now went up the weary and perpetual steps, he was daunted and
bewildered by their almost infinite series. But it was not the hot
horror of a dream or of anything that might be exaggeration or delusion.
Their infinity was more like the empty infinity of arithmetic, something
unthinkable, yet necessary to thought. Or it was like the stunning
statements of astronomy about the distance of the fixed stars. He
was ascending the house of reason, a thing more hideous than unreason
itself.

By the time they reached Dr. Bull's landing, a last window showed them
a harsh, white dawn edged with banks of a kind of coarse red, more like
red clay than red cloud. And when they entered Dr. Bull's bare garret it
was full of light.

Syme had been haunted by a half historic memory in connection with these
empty rooms and that austere daybreak. The moment he saw the garret
and Dr. Bull sitting writing at a table, he remembered what the memory
was--the French Revolution. There should have been the black outline of
a guillotine against that heavy red and white of the morning. Dr. Bull
was in his white shirt and black breeches only; his cropped, dark head
might well have just come out of its wig; he might have been Marat or a
more slipshod Robespierre.

Yet when he was seen properly, the French fancy fell away. The Jacobins
were idealists; there was about this man a murderous materialism. His
position gave him a somewhat new appearance. The strong, white light of
morning coming from one side creating sharp shadows, made him seem both
more pale and more angular than he had looked at the breakfast on the
balcony. Thus the two black glasses that encased his eyes might
really have been black cavities in his skull, making him look like a
death's-head. And, indeed, if ever Death himself sat writing at a wooden
table, it might have been he.

He looked up and smiled brightly enough as the men came in, and rose
with the resilient rapidity of which the Professor had spoken. He set
chairs for both of them, and going to a peg behind the door, proceeded
to put on a coat and waistcoat of rough, dark tweed; he buttoned it up
neatly, and came back to sit down at his table.

The quiet good humour of his manner left his two opponents helpless. It
was with some momentary difficulty that the Professor broke silence and
began, "I'm sorry to disturb you so early, comrade," said he, with a
careful resumption of t