Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/78

58 same soul, exactly as it was originally, with the same defects and the same qualities, with the same black feather. Do you understand?"

"Not quite," said Theophrastus apologetically.

"Yet I'm lowering myself to the level of your intelligence," said Adolphe, impatient but frank. "But it is necessary to distinguish between the soul which appears hereditarily and that which returns by reincarnation."

"What do you mean?" said Theophrastus rather faintly.

"An hereditary soul which revives the ancestor has always its black feather, owing to the fact that it is the result of a unique combination, since it exists in the sheath, the body, which is hereditary to the same extent. Is that clear?"

"I notice that whenever you say, 'Is that clear?' my dear Adolphe, everything seems to go as dark as pitch," said Marceline humbly.

Adolphe ground his teeth, and raised his voice:

"Whereas a soul which returns in the course of reincarnation finds itself in a body in which nothing has been prepared to receive it. The aggregate of the materials of this body have their origin in—I take Theophrastus as