Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/729

722 “And now,” he continued, looking at me intently, “let me impress upon you once more that if we are to gain our ends we must work with heart and soul in our work. Are you tired of it? Shall we give it up, and throw all our labours to the winds?”

“I will never give up the search,” I replied; “latterly I have not been with you as much as I desired, but somehow it appears to me as if our investigations were all fraught with evil results to—to—to one whom I love—”

“A coward easily peoples the dark with difficulties,” he sneered.

“I am no coward,” answered I, warmly, “nor will I permit you to taunt me with such a name.” I saw his eyes flashing as I spoke. “I care nothing for your sneers,” I continued, “and I should never have experienced them if it had not been that ever since the last night I spent with you in yonder laboratory, I have feared for the happiness—nay, for the life—of one whose life and happiness are dearer to me than—”

“Peace, idiot!” he exclaimed, in a tone and with a gesture that made me start back. “Peace! Do you think I am blind, and that I have not noted everything that has occurred? Do you think I was not listening to every word she uttered on that night? Who, think you, was it that made her speak? Who drew from her the secret knowledge of her inner spirit?”

As he spoke he rose up to his full height, his eyes sparkling and flashing, while I almost crouched into a seat under his impetuous bearing.

“Listen,” he continued, scarcely less calmly; “it was not long after I met —you know whom I mean—that I discovered I had encountered no ordinary being. I read it in the deep glow of her brown eyes. I read there that in her inmost soul lay the secret which I was striving for, and which you were longing for. I loved her—I told you I loved her—but I loved science more. If I had gained her, the Great Secret would even now have been mine; but she is yours, and all is left with you—all to lose, or all to gain.”

Since the time when my wife declared that she