"Ye-es," agreed Mr. Newman absently. "Anywhere, you said? You can open my eyes at any period in time? You can do that, Carrick?"
"Well," began Carrick, and paused. "Why?" he demanded. "What have you got in your mind?"
Mr. Newman came slowly down toward him till he leaned across the top of the desk facing the younger man. He was smiling still, but a fire had lit in his eyes, something adventurous and strong looked out through them. The elderly stout man was braced and exalted like a martyr going to the stake.
"Can you?" he repeated. "Can you, Carrick? Say—can you do that?"
"Unless——" hesitated the other, staring at him. "But—you must have been somewhere, at any time. Yes, I can do it."
Mr. Newman's eyes looked over his head and beyond him.
"Then," he said, and a deep note reverberated in his even voice— "then show me the day on which Christ died!"
He continued to look past Carrick at the shadowy end of the room, still smiling his strange and uplifted smile.
Carrick moved in his chair, with a half-gesture as of irritation.
"Look here," he said. "Pull yourself together, Newman. There are limits, you know, after all."