"Did you find it?" Prothero asked, after an interval.

"You mean?"

"He ran into a motor-car--as I was passing. I was perhaps a little
to blame. He asked me to bring his machine to Cambridge. He went
on in the car. . . . It is all perfectly simple."

Prothero glanced at the splinters in the wheel with a renewed
interest.

"Did your wheel get into it?" he asked. Benham affected not to
hear. He was evidently in no mood for story-telling.

"Why did you get down, Prothero?" he asked abruptly, with the note
of suppressed anger thickening his voice.

Prothero became vividly red. "I don't know," he said, after an
interval.

"I DO," said Benham, and they went on in a rich and active silence
to Cambridge, and the bicycle repair shop in Bridge Street, and
Trinity College. At the gate of Trinity Benham stopped, and
conveyed rather by acts than words that Prothero was to descend. He
got down meekly enough, although he felt that the return to Maltby's
yard might have many points of interest. But the spirit had gone
out of him.