"It wasn't that sort of shrinking, Guest. I know Miss Poole well. I understand the real strength and brilliancy of her mind. She is not a foolish, ordinary girl to be frightened as you suggest. I told her that I had come for my answer. I think I spoke well. My heart was in what I said, and I urged my cause as powerfully as I could. Miss Poole absolutely refused to give me any answer at all."
"Well, that is no very terrible thing, William. I know little of women, but one is told that is their way. She will not yield at once, that is all."
"I wish I could think so, Guest. It did not strike me in that way at all. And she said a curious thing also. She said that I might re-open the question after the public demonstration. She wouldn't pledge herself to give an answer even then. But she said that I must say nothing more to her on the subject until after the demonstration."
Wilson Guest laughed.
"What a powerful drug this love is!" he said. "It's as unexpected in its action as ether! My dear William, you are worrying yourself about nothing. I'm sure of it. Remember that you can't look at the thing with an unprejudiced eye. It's all quite clear to me. Miss Poole simply wants to wait until she has seen your triumph with her own eyes. That is all, believe me. You are in too much of a hurry. How curious that is! It is the strangest thing in the world to find you—you of all men—in a hurry. It is only by monumental and marvellous patience that you have succeeded in discovering a law, and applying that law with my help, which makes you the greatest man of science the world has ever known. And yet you leap at the fence of a girl's hesitation and reserve as if everything depended on breaking a record for the jump!"
Gouldesbrough smiled faintly and shook his head. He was not convinced, but it was plain that he was comforted by what Guest had said.
His smile was melancholy and gently sad; and in the electric radiance of the huge mysterious room he seemed like some eager and kindly priest or minister who bewailed the sins of his flock, but with a humorous and human understanding of mortal frailty.
And there he stood, the greatest genius of modern times, and also one of the most cruel and criminal of living men. Yet so strange and tortuous is the human soul, so enslaved can conscience be by the abnormal mind, that he thought of himself as nothing but a devoted lover.
His passion and desire for this girl were horrible in their egotism and their intensity alike. But the man with the marvellous brain thought that the one thing which set him apart from the herd and redeemed him for his crime was his love for Marjorie Poole. He really, honestly and truly, believed that!
It was not without reason that Donald Megbie had seen the blaze of insanity in Sir William's eyes. A supreme genius is very seldom sane. Professor Lombroso has said so, Max Nordau agitated scientific Europe by saying it a few years ago.