"We'll try again!" the white figure said with a smile, "Perhaps we should go deeper."
And then with firm strong hand the last secret of muscle and nerve and bone was laid bare and the white face looked into the eyes of the audience through a mist of tears.
"I'm sorry, my friends. But we must face the truth. It's better to know the truth, however bitter, than to believe a lie. I do not dogmatize. I do not draw conclusions. I merely show you the thing that is."
With a soft rush the big curtain came down in a silence that could be felt. The dazed crowd waked from the spell and poured into the aisles, while Stuart still sat gripping the arms of his seat with strangling emotion.
At last he said to himself with choking emphasis:
"He was cruel, inhuman, unjust—I refuse to believe it—she has a soul—— She has a soul!"
And yet a question had been raised in his mind that was destined to change the whole motive and purpose of his life.
CHAPTER XI
ILLUMINATION