Once more, even in the midst of her excitement, a shade passed over her face. She touched him on the arm again.
"Go on! Tell me! Not this, not that. Tell me about the work!"
"I," he repeated, "I alone of all men in the world have learnt how to collect the invisible vibrations of thought itself. Now, remember what I told you at first. I mentioned Light, the way in which Light can be passed through a prism, split up into its component parts, and give the secret of its composition to the eye of the scientist. Not only can I collect the mysterious vibrations of the human brain, but I can pass them through a spectroscope more marvellous than any instrument ever dreamt of in the history of the world. I can take the vibrations of thought, and discover their consistency, their strength, their meaning."
She stared at him incredulously. "Even yet," she said, "I fail to see the ultimate adaptation of all this. I realize that you have discovered a hitherto unproved truth about the mechanism of thought. That is an achievement which will send your name ringing down the avenues of the future. But there seems to be something behind all you are telling me. You have more to say. What is the practical outcome of all this, this theoretical fact?"
"It is this," he answered. "I hold in my hands the power to know what this or that person, be it a king upon his throne, a girl on her wedding day, or a criminal in the dock, is thinking at any given moment."
She started from him with a little cry. "Oh no," she said, and her face had grown very white indeed. "Oh no, God would not allow it. It is a power only God has."
He laughed, and in his laugh she heard something that made her shrink back still further. It was a laugh such as Lucifer might have laughed, who defied a Power which he would not acknowledge to be greater than his.
"You will never do that," she said, "wonderful as you are."
"Marjorie," he answered, "I am a man with a brain that theorizes, but never ventures upon a statement that cannot be proved by fact. If I tell you this, if I hint broadly at the outcome of my life's work, I am doing so, believe me, because I have chapter and verse for all I say, because I can prove that it has passed from the dim realms of theory and of hope into the brilliant daylight of actual achievement!"
She stared at him. His words were too much for her mind to grasp immediately.