IV
"Fine! Fine! Charley!" interrupted Rawn sardonically. "Everybody's read that who cared to read it. It's too dry for most folks. It's public; it's wide open, no secret about it. But who wants it? What use has a mollycule and a drop of oil in a glass jar got in actual business? What ice does it cut?"
"I know—I know, Mr. Rawn; very little indeed. But, one idea grows out of another. Now, what I was experimenting with was this same second current of electricity—whatever it is. It's got something to do—I don't just know what—with this same movement of the molecules. Now, can't you see, something has got to move them. If you've got perpetual motion, you've got a perpetual power somewhere back at it, and a power that is endless, universal—
"Mr. Rawn," he resumed earnestly, "when I got that far along, I got to—well—sort of dreaming! I followed that dance of the atoms on out—into the universe—into the manifestation of—"
"Well, of what?"
"Of God! Of Providence! Of Something, whatever it is that begins and perpetuates; something that plans! Something that created. Something that intends life and comfort and joy for the things It created."
V
Rawn eyed him coldly. "Charley," said he, "you're talking tommyrot! You can't run this world into the spiritual world. That's wrong. It's irreligious. Besides, it's rot."
Halsey hardly heard him. "So then I began to wonder what we'd find yet, when we had that vast, universal power all for our own—all for man, you know, Mr. Rawn. Living's hard to-day, Mr. Rawn. There's a lot of injustice in the world nowadays. So—well, I wondered if it weren't nearly time that things should change. We've always moved on up—or thought we did, anyhow—so why shouldn't we keep on moving, keep on making discoveries?"
"That's what I thought, Charley!"