"Neither can I," I agreed. "It's beyond reasoning about."
"An enemy might have written a lie," suggested Mr. Royce.
"But Marcia wouldn't have believed it," retorted Curtiss. "I know her—she would have cast it from her. She trusted me. No; whatever the secret, it was one whose truth she could not doubt."
And I agreed with him.
We shook hands with him, at last; and when the great White Star ship swung out into the stream, he waved us a final good-bye from the deck.
"So he's gone," I said, as we rolled back down town again.
"Yes—and the question is whether he was wise to go—whether it can do any good."
"I think he's wise," I said. "It's a real passion—as you yourself pointed out to me."
"A real passion—yes," agreed our junior. "And yet—do you know, Lester, at the bottom of it all, I suspect some hideous, unbelievable thing. It turns me cold sometimes—trying to imagine what the secret is. It's a sort of dim, vague, threatening monster."
"Yes; I've felt that way about it. I can't grasp it, and yet I feel that it's there, just below the surface of things, ready to jump out and rend us. Well, Curtiss will find out."