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Krause had refused one or two invitations to visit Carstall in the new home the latter had made for himself near Gourdon in Eastern Provence. At a fourth intimation he went. He had seen very little of his former teacher since the death of the Master Director, ten years before. He had gone to preside over the big Research Station at Chicken Itza in Maya land, and his work on the latent infections in these jungle sites had been subtle and fruitful.

Carstall was installed in a modernised castle that was built into the cliff of Gourdon, looking down on the gorge of the Loup. He had given up active practice for some years and had reverted to certain problems of physiological chemistry from which he had been diverted during the economic collapse that had preceded the War of the Ideologies. So far he had published no results of very commanding originality. He had a very lovely wife, dark–eyed and still, she was fully a dozen years younger than himself, and she bad given him three boys and a daughter.

Husband and wife were evidently upon the most affectionate terms, they could not meet without some trifling caress, but it seemed to Krause that they talked very little. Once or twice he saw her looking at her husband with a gentle scrutiny, as though she felt unsure of him and of what he might do next. It seemed odd to Krause that he should be aware of this and Carstall apparently unaware, or else so used to it as to be indifferent to it. It was as if beneath the general candour of his bearing he had kept something essential, some belief or disbelief, some habit of thought or action, out of that relationship, and that she felt that incompleteness.

Krause sympathised with Mrs. Carstall and thought Carstall ought to have lived or behaved or done something different to avoid this faint but perceptible aloofness. Perhaps the disparity in their years had been too wide a gap to bridge, or perhaps the very love they had for one another was a barrier between them. Krause had seen that happen before. Passionate love, which can bring two humans closer than breathing, can at the same time keep them worlds apart. Krause was one of those quiet, observant, unaggressive men who go about sympathising mutely with pretty women, and particularly with the wives of their friends, but who never think of themselves in the role of lover. He thought all men were unworthy of women and he made no exception of himself. Which left his sympathies unhampered.

He thought all men unworthy of women and generally his estimates of his friends were qualified. He never allowed this to appear in his demeanour, but it was a private consolation for his own sense of inadequacy.

Krause had begun as Carstall's pupil and the tone of their old relationship of mentor and enquirer still flavoured their intercourse. Krause was a subtle and original worker, but his make–up had an ineradicable junior quality, and by nature Carstall was a sixth–form boy. So Carstall usually had the conversational lead. And it presently became clear to Krause that Carstall had a bias for talking about the Master Director.

By imperceptible degrees Krause apprehended what was coming.

They were sitting together after lunch one afternoon on the terrace, indolently aware of the mountainous loveliness spread out before their eyes. Nice could be seen through a thin veil like a burst sack of microscopic crystals poured down a slope, and far beneath in the gorge the Loup was a thin, bright–blue line winding its way down through a nearer wilderness of crests, cliffs and wooded slopes towards the Mediterranean.

Carstall reverted again to Rud. What was Rud's significance in the world? What had he achieved? Had his work been done when he died? At last he blurted out what he wanted to say, speaking with an affectation of casualness: "Did you know it, Krause?—I killed him."