It sometimes happens that a very slight thing will recall a very long chain of circumstances; a look, the intonation of a word, the attitude of a moment, will call up other looks and words and attitudes in quick succession, until the chain is complete. So it happened to me, when I saw the learned professor standing by the table, with a cigar in his mouth, and his great gray eyes fixed upon me from behind his enormous spectacles. I recognized the man, and the little I knew of him came back to me.
The professor is one of the most learned specialists in neurology and the study of the brain now living; he is, moreover, a famous anthropologist. He began his career as a surgeon, and would have been celebrated as an operator had he not one day inherited a private fortune, which permitted him to abandon his surgical practice in favor of a special branch for which he knew himself more particularly fitted. So soon as I recalled the circumstances of our first meeting I realized that I had been in his company only a few moments, and had not known his name.
He came and sat himself down in an easy-chair by my side, and puffed in silence at a big cigar.
"We have met before," I said. "I could not make you out at first. You were at Weissenstein last year. You remember that affair?"
Professor Cutter looked at me curiously for several seconds before he answered.
"You are the man who let down the rope," he said at last. "I remember you now very well."
"Did you ever hear any more of that lady?" asked he, presently.
"No, I did not even know her name, any more than I knew yours," I replied. "I took you for a physician, and the lady for your patient."
We heard steps on the polished floor outside the smoking-room.
"If I were you, I would not say anything to Carvel about that matter," said the professor quickly.
The door opened, and John entered the room. He was a little pale and looked nervous.
"Ah," he ejaculated, "I thought you would fraternize over the tobacco."
"It is written that the free should be brothers and equal," said the professor, with a laugh.
"I never knew two brothers who were equal," said Carvel, in reflective tones. "I do not know why the ideal freedom and equality, attaching to the ideal brothers, should not be as good as any other visionary aim for tangible earthly government; but it certainly does not seem so easy of realization, nor so sound in the working, as our good English principle that exceptions prove the rule, and that the more exceptions there are the better the rule will be."