In the end Charles realized the truth, that it was this negative­ness, this lack of any real Braceweighthood, that had brought the man to his power and wealth. Having no definite character of his own, he had gladly accepted a lifetime of application to the routine of buying and selling, his protective colouring enabling him to move through that jungle in safety. He was not, Charles gathered, a self-made man; that struggle, which turns those who win it into stunted giants—half maimed, half Herculean figures—had been unnecessary in his case. He had simply inherited a good business, and turned it into a huge one with the aid of his colour­less persistence. Charles liked him; he had the faint, but genuine, appeal of the harmless and ordinary character. He, on his part, seemed to find in Charles his one ray of hope. The doctors over­awed him, the nurses domineered him, the charwomen were too large and healthy for his peace of mind, and Charles fell into an intermediate category. He asked Charles his name, and addressed him punctiliously as ‘Mr.’ Lumley, confiding in him at every stage of his circuitous road to recovery. ‘Do you think I could ask them not to give me cascara to-night, Mr. Lumley? Or is it a regulation, do you think?’ Or: ‘Mr. Lumley, is it usual, when the nurse takes a patient’s temperature, for her not to tell him what it is? They never tell me what mine is.’ Charles was reassu­ring, calling into play that softness and slight hesitancy of speech that the University had made, once upon a time, his normal utterance. He had long since laid it aside in favour of the curter, more aggressive manner of the normal world, but something about Mr. Braceweight’s helplessness, he found, called it out again despite himself, and made him realize afresh that it was a speech-habit common to the disabled.