"I will not hear you, Julius!" exclaimed Lefevre. "I am neither wise nor great. Your perfect secret would be too much for me. I might be tempted to keep it for my own use. Come home with me, and apply it well yourself."
Julius was silent for a space, murmuring only, "I have no time for argument." Then his face assumed the white sickness of death, and his dark eyes seemed to grow larger and to burn with a concentrated fire.
"Lefevre!" he panted in amazement, "do you know that you are refusing such a medical and spiritual secret as the world has not known for thousands of years? A secret that would enable you—you—to work cures more wonderful than any that are told of the greatest Eastern Thaumaturge?"
"I have discovered a method," answered the doctor,—"an imperfect, clumsy method—for myself, of transmitting nervous force or ether for curative purposes. That, for the present, must be enough for me. I cannot hear your secret, Julius."
"Lefevre, I beg of you," pleaded Julius, "take it from me. I have promised myself, as a last satisfaction, that the secret I have guarded—it is not altogether mine: it is an old oriental secret—that now I would hand it over to you for the good of mankind, that at the last I might say to myself, 'I have, after all, opened my hand liberally to my fellow-men!' For pity's sake, Lefevre, don't deny me that small final satisfaction!"
"Julius," said Lefevre, firmly, "if your method is so perfect—as I believe it must be from what I have seen—I dare not lay on myself the responsibility of possessing its secret."
"Would not my example keep you from using it selfishly?"
"Does the experience of another," demanded the doctor, "however untoward it may be, ever keep a man from making his own? I dare not—I dare not trust myself to hold your perfect secret."
"Then share it with others," responded Julius, promptly; "and I daresay it is not so perfect, but that it could be made more perfect still."
"I'll have nothing to do with it, Julius; you must keep and use it yourself."