The Professor, all the while, was leading a double life. While the
author of "The Vital Thing" reaped the fruits of popular approval,
the distinguished microscopist continued his laboratory work
unheeded save by the few who were engaged in the same line of
investigations. His divided allegiance had not hitherto affected the
quality of his work: it seemed to him that he returned to the
laboratory with greater zest after an afternoon in a drawing-room
where readings from "The Vital Thing" had alternated with plantation
melodies and tea. He had long ceased to concern himself with what
his colleagues thought of his literary career. Of the few whom he
frequented, none had referred to "The Vital Thing"; and he knew
enough of their lives to guess that their silence might as fairly be
attributed to indifference as to disapproval. They were intensely
interested in the Professor's views on beetles, but they really
cared very little what he thought of the Almighty.

The Professor entirely shared their feelings, and one of his chief
reasons for cultivating the success which accident had bestowed on
him, was that it enabled him to command a greater range of
appliances for his real work. He had known what it was to lack books
and instruments; and "The Vital Thing" was the magic wand which
summoned them to his aid. For some time he had been feeling his way
along the edge of a discovery: balancing himself with professional
skill on a plank of hypothesis flung across an abyss of uncertainty.
The conjecture was the result of years of patient gathering of
facts: its corroboration would take months more of comparison and
classification. But at the end of the vista victory loomed. The
Professor felt within himself that assurance of ultimate
justification which, to the man of science, makes a life-time seem
the mere comma between premiss and deduction. But he had reached the