AT LAST!
When the sounds of amused laughter at Lord Landsend's unconscious revelation had passed away, and that young nobleman, slightly flushed indeed, but still with the imperturbability that a man of his class and kind learns how to wear on all occasions, had regained his seat, a fire of questions poured in upon Sir William Gouldesbrough.
The famous scientists of the party had all risen and were conferring together in a ripple of rapid and exciting talk, which for the convenience of the foreign members of their number, was conducted in French.
Marjorie Poole, who had not looked at Sir William at all during the whole of the afternoon, was very pale and quiet.
Gouldesbrough had noticed this, and even in the moment of supreme triumph his heart was heavy within him. He feared that something irrevocable had come between him and the girl he loved, and her pallor only intensified his longing to be done with the whole thing, to be alone with her and to have the explanation which he desired so keenly and yet dreaded so acutely. For what Lord Malvin had said to him had stabbed him with a deadly fear, as each solemn, significant word rang through the room.
"Could it be," he asked himself, "could it possibly be that these people suspected or knew anything?"
His quick brain answered the question in its own swift and logical fashion. It was utterly impossible that Lord Malvin could know anything. His words were a coincidence and that was all. No, he need not fear, and possibly, he thought, the long strain of work and worry had had its influence upon his nerves and he had become morbid and unstrung. That fear passed, but there was still in his heart the fear, and strangely enough an even greater fear, that he would never now make Marjorie his own.
His outward face and demeanour showed nothing of the storm and riot within. He was calm, self-possessed, and smiling, quick to answer and to reply, to explain this or that point in his discoveries, to be adequate, confident and serene.
In reply to a question from Dean Weare, Sir William leant upon one of the cases which covered the thought-transforming mechanism and gave a little lecture.
"Quite so, Mr. Dean," he said; "it is exactly as you suppose, the form, power, and vividness of the pictures upon the screen correspond exactly with the strength of the intellect of the person whose thoughts are making these pictures. You will find your strongly imaginative man, or your man whose brain is much turned inward upon himself, and who, for this very reason takes little part in the action or movement of life, will give a far more complete and vivid picture than any other. For example, assuming that the Bishop's valet is an ordinary servant and accompanied his Lordship to Palestine a few months ago, and saw exactly what his Lordship saw, that man's memories would not be thrown upon the screen with such wonderful vividness as his Lordship's were. He would not be able, in all probability, to produce a picture, a general impression, which is a real picture and not a photograph, and which so conveys the exact likeness of a place far more than any photograph could ever do. His thoughts would probably be represented by some special incident which had struck his fancy at the time and assumed a proportion in his mind which a cultured and logical faculty of thought would at once reject as being out of due proportion. And finally, in a precise ratio to the power of the brain—I do not mean to its health, or ill-health, its weight or size, I mean its pure thinking power—so are the thoughts, when transformed into light, vivid or not vivid, as the case may be."