Then one by one they all departed; but as David was going too Rossiter detained him by a kindly pressure on the arm--a contact which sent a half-pleasant, half-disagreeable thrill through his nerves.
"Don't hurry away unless you really _are_ pressed for time.

I want to show you some of my specimens and the place where I work." David followed him--after taking his leave of Mrs.Rossiter who accepted his polite sentences--a little stammered--with a slightly pompous acquiescence--followed him to the library and then through a curtained door down some steps into a great studio-laboratory, provided (behind screens) with washing places, and full of mysteries, with cupboards and shelves and further rooms beyond and a smell of chloride of lime combined with alcoholic preservatives and undefined chemicals.

After a tour round this domain in which David was only slightly interested--for lack of the right education and imagination--so far he--or--she had only the mind of a mathematician--Rossiter led him back into the library, drew out chairs, indicated cigarettes--even whiskey and soda if he wanted it--David declined--and then began to say what was at the back of his mind:-- "We met first in the train, the South Wales Express, you remember?
I fancy you told me then that you had been in South Africa, in this bungled war, and had been either wounded or ill in some way.

In fact you went so far as to say you had had 'necrosis of the jaw,' a thing I politely doubted because whatever it was it has left no perceptible scar.

Of course it's damned impertinent of me to cross-examine you at all, or to ask _why_ you went to and why you left South Africa.