“Give her my love and tell her how glad I am that her days of solitude are over, and that I shall come to her to-morrow as soon as you will allow me.”
He nodded again, and with a tender hand stroked the silver bandeaux of the old lady’s pretty hair.
“After all, old age is quite a beautiful thing!” he said, and stooping, he kissed her on the brow. “It is, perhaps, wrong that we should wish to be always young?”
He passed on then, and, entering his library, rang a bell. Vasho appeared.
“Vasho, the hour has come!” he said, whereat Vasho, the dumb, uttered an inarticulate animal sound of terror. “Either I have succeeded, or I have failed. Let us go and see!”
He paused for a moment, his eyes resting on the mysterious steel instrument, which, always working in its accustomed place on its block of crystal, struck off its tiny sparks of fire with unceasing regularity.
“You gave me the first clue!” he said, addressing it. “You were a fluke—a chance—a stray hint from the unseen. And you will go on for ever if nothing disturbs your balance—if nothing shakes your exact mathematical poise. So will the Universe similarly go on for ever, if similarly undisturbed. All a matter of calculation, equality of distribution and exact poise—designed by a faultless Intelligence! An Intelligence which we are prone to deny—a Divinity we dare to doubt! Man perplexes himself with a million forms of dogma which he calls ‘religions,’ when there is truly only one religion possible for all the world, and that is the intelligent, reasoning, devout worship of the true God as made manifest in His works. These works none but the few will study, preferring to delude themselves with the fantastic spectres of their own imaginations. Yet, when we have learned what in time we must know,—the words of the Evangelist may be fulfilled: ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first earth and the first heaven were passed away.... And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.’ So we may have a joyous world, where youth and life are eternal, and where never a heart-throb of passion or grief breaks the halcyon calm! Shall we care for it, I wonder? Will it not prove monotonous?—and when all is smooth sailing, shall we not long for a storm?”
A quick sigh escaped him,—then remembering Vasho’s presence, he shook off his temporary abstraction.
“Come, Vasho!” he said, “I must go and find this marvel of my science—living or dead! And don’t look so terrified!—one would think you were the victim! Whatever happens, you are safe!”
Vasho made expressive signs of apologetic humility and appeal, to which Dimitrius gave no response save an indulgent smile.