Page:Ziska (Corelli M, 1897).pdf/46

Rh he echoed slowly and meditatively. "You do not believe in any possibility of there being a life—or several lives—after this present death through which we must all pass inevitably, sooner or later?"

"Not in the least! I leave such ideas to the ignorant and uneducated. I should be unworthy of the progressive teachings of my time if I believed such arrant nonsense."

"Death, you consider, finishes all? There is nothing further—no mysteries beyond?..." and Dr. Dean's eyes glittered as he stretched forth one thin, slight hand and pointed into space with the word " beyond," an action which gave it a curious emphasis, and for a fleeting second left a weird impression on even the careless mind of Gervase. But he laughed it off lightly.

"Nothing beyond? Of course not! My dear sir, why ask such a question? Nothing can be plainer or more positive than the fact that death, as you say, finishes all."

A woman's laugh, low and exquisitely musical, rippled on the air as he spoke—delicious laughter, rarer than song; for women as a rule laugh too loudly, and the sound of their merriment partakes more of the nature of a goose's cackle than any other sort of natural melody. But this large, soft and