I'm going to swing for you... Dear, tender old phrase,' he murmured;
`never true till this moment. I am going to swing for you.
For you, dear friend. For your sake. At your express desire.'
"`Help!' cried the Warden of Brakespeare College; `help!'
"`The puppy struggles,' said the undergraduate, with an eye of pity,
`the poor puppy struggles. How fortunate it is that I am wiser
and kinder than he,' and he sighted his weapon so as exactly to cover
the upper part of Eames's bald head.
"`Smith,' said the philosopher with a sudden change to a sort
of ghastly lucidity, `I shall go mad.'
"`And so look at things from the right angle,' observed Smith,
sighing gently. `Ah, but madness is only a palliative at best,
a drug. The only cure is an operation--an operation that is
always successful: death.'
"As he spoke the sun rose. It seemed to put colour into everything,
with the rapidity of a lightning artist. A fleet of little
clouds sailing across the sky changed from pigeon-gray to pink.
All over the little academic town the tops of different buildings
took on different tints: here the sun would pick out the green
enameled on a pinnacle, there the scarlet tiles of a villa;
here the copper ornament on some artistic shop, and there
the sea-blue slates of some old and steep church roof.
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