"True," he murmured, "true. I never went further into any art, any science, than to find its shortcomings."
"Yet even that," resumed the Professor, "is something. You are, at any rate, the only man for my purpose."
"Your purpose?"
"Yes. It is the same as yours. You are to be the instrument; I furnish the power. You are to be able to feel, to think, as others do."
"Oh!" muttered Vane, "impossible." Now that his wish was called possible of fulfilment, he shrank a little from it. He followed the Professor up a long flight of curving steps, through dim halls, to where a bluish light flickered. As they passed this feeble glow it flared suddenly into a brilliant jet of flame; a door swung open, revealing a somewhat bare chamber fitted up partly as a study, partly as a laboratory. The door closed behind them silently.
"Mere trickery," said the Professor, "the sort of thing that the knaves of science fool the world with. Will you sit down? Here is where I have worked for—for more years than you have lived, Mr. Vane. Here is where I have succeeded. In pursuit of this success I have spent my life and nearly all the fortune that my family made in generations gone. I have this house, and my daughter, and my science. The world spins madly all about me, in this splendid town; here, in this stillness, I have worked to make that world richer than I found it. Will you help me?"
Vane had flung himself upon a wicker couch. He watched his host striding up and down the room with a fervor that had nothing of senility in it. The look of earnestness upon that fine old face was magnetic. Vane's mistrust vanished at sight of it.
"If you will trust me," he answered. He saw himself as the beneficiary, his host as the giver of a great gift.
"I trust you. I heard enough, to-night, to believe you sincere in wishing to see life from another soul than your own. But you must promise to obey my instructions to the letter."
"I promise."