for the altar."

By that Benham was slipped from the recognized code and launched
upon speculations which became the magnificent research.

It was not only in complexion and stature and ways of thinking that
Billy and Benham contrasted. Benham inclined a little to eloquence,
he liked very clean hands, he had a dread of ridiculous outlines.
Prothero lapsed readily into ostentatious slovenliness, when his
hands were dirty he pitied them sooner than scrubbed them, he would
have worn an overcoat with one tail torn off rather than have gone
cold. Moreover, Prothero had an earthy liking for animals, he could
stroke and tickle strange cats until they wanted to leave father and
mother and all earthly possessions and follow after him, and he
mortgaged a term's pocket money and bought and kept a small terrier
in the school house against all law and tradition, under the
baseless pretence that it was a stray animal of unknown origin.
Benham, on the other hand, was shy with small animals and faintly
hostile to big ones. Beasts he thought were just beasts. And
Prothero had a gift for caricature, while Benham's aptitude was for
music.

It was Prothero's eyes and pencil that first directed Benham to the
poor indolences and evasions and insincerities of the masters. It
was Prothero's wicked pictures that made him see the shrivelled
absurdity of the vulgar theology. But it was Benham who stood
between Prothero and that rather coarsely conceived epicureanism
that seemed his logical destiny. When quite early in their
Cambridge days Prothero's revolt against foppery reached a nadir of
personal neglect, and two philanthropists from the rooms below him,