She listened indeed,—every sense alert and braced with interest.
“All ideas, all sentiments, all virtues, all sins, are in the cells of the brain,” he went on. “The soul plays on these cells with vibrating touches of light, just as you play on the notes of the piano, or as a typist fingers the keyboard of the machine. On the quality or characteristic of the soul depends the result. Youth is in the cells of the brain. Should the cells become dry and withered, it is because the soul has ceased to charge them with its energy. But when this is the case, it is possible—I say it is possible!—for science to step in. The spark can be re-energised,—the cells can be re-charged.”
Diana caught her breath. Was he mad?—or sane with a sanity that realises a miracle? She gazed at him as though plunging her eyes into a well of mystery.
He smiled strangely. “Poor lady of mature years!” he said. “You have heard me, have you not? Well, think upon what I have said! I am not mad, be assured!—I am temperate in reason and cool in blood. I am only a scientist, bent on defying that Angel at the gate of Eden with the flaming sword who ‘keeps the way of the Tree of Life,’ lest men should take and eat and live for ever! It would not do for men in the aggregate to live for ever, for most of them are little more than mites in a cheese,—but as the Prophet Esdras was told: ‘This present world is made for the many, but the world to come for the few.’ That ‘world to come’ does not mean a world after death—but the world of here and now—a world ‘for the few’ who know how to use it, and themselves!—a world where the same moonlight as this shines like a robe of woven pearl spread over all human ugliness and ignorance, leaving only God’s beauty and wisdom! Look at it once more!—make a picture of it in your mind!—and then—good-night!”
She raised her eyes to the dense purple of the sky, and let them wander over the lovely gardens, drenched in silver glory—then extended her hand.
“Thank you for all you have told me,” she said. “I shall remember it. Good-night!”
CHAPTER XI
The next day Diana entered upon her work,—and for a fortnight following she was kept fully employed. But nothing mysterious, nothing alarming or confusing to the mind was presented for her contemplation or co-operation. Not once was she called upon to enter the laboratory where the strange wheel whirled at the bidding of the influence of light, going faster or slower, according to the ascension or declension of the sun; and not once did Dimitrius refer to the subject of his discourse with her on that first moonlight night of her arrival. Her knowledge of Latin and Greek stood her in good stead, for she was set to translate some musty rolls of vellum, on which were inscribed certain abstruse scientific propositions of a thousand years old,—problems propounded by the Assyrians, and afterwards copied by the Latins, who for the most part, had left out some of the original phraseology, thereby losing valuable hints and suggestions, which Dimitrius was studying to discover and replace. Diana was a careful, clever, and devotedly conscientious worker; nothing escaped her, and she shirked no pains to unravel the difficulties, which to less interested students, might have seemed insuperable. Much as she desired to know more of Dimitrius himself and his own special line of research, she held her peace and asked no questions, merely taking his instructions and faithfully doing exactly as she was told. She worked in the great library where he had at first received her, and where the curious steel instrument she had noticed on entering, swung to and fro continuously, striking off a pin’s point of fire as it moved. Sometimes in the pauses of her close examination of the faded and difficult Latin script on which all her energies were bent, she would lift her eyes and look at this strange object as though it were a living companion in the room, and would almost mentally ask it to disclose its meaning; and one morning, impelled by a sudden fancy, she put her watch open on the table, and measured the interval between one spark of fire and the next. She at once found that the dots of flame were struck off with precision at every second. They were, in fact, seconds of time.
“So that, if one had leisure to watch the thing,” she mused, “one would know that when sixty fire-flashes have flown into air, one minute has passed. And I wonder what becomes of these glittering particles?”
She knew well enough that they did not perish, but were only absorbed into another elemental organism. She had observed, too, that the movement of the whole machine, delicately balanced on its crystal pedestal, was sharp and emphatic when the sun was at the meridian, and more subdued though not less precise in the afternoon. She had very little opportunity, however, to continue a long watching of this inexplicable and apparently meaningless contrivance after midday, as then her hours of work were considered over and she was free to do as she liked. Sometimes she remained in her own apartments, practising her music, or reading,—and more often than not she went for a drive out into the open country with Madame Dimitrius with the light victoria and pair, which was a gift from Dimitrius to his mother, who could not be persuaded to drive in a motor-car. It was a charming turn-out, recognised in the neighbourhood as “the Doctor’s carriage”—for though Geneva and its environs are well supplied with many professors of medicine and surgery, Dimitrius seemed at this period to have gained a reputation apart from the rest as “the” doctor, par excellence. Once Diana asked him whether he had a large practice? He laughed.