"Prove yourself!"
"But, doctor, it is you who must provide the testimony—!"
"Empirical evidence is my condition. Something measurable. Suspend, for one moment, one natural principle—"
Ruefuly, Chris laughed. "To simple men—fishermen, farmers, tax collectors—the power of any genuine conviction seemed miraculous because of its accomplishments. I healed the neurotics of my day. By suggestion, I added to the innocent gaiety of many a gathering. But even that poor, positive procedure is inverted now; many churches find their miracles in the hysterics of their own sick—bleeding, stigmata, fits!" He sighed. "Surely you, doctor, a miracle-maker in reality—are not naïve enough to ask that the very heart of truth be magically violated so you may accept truth? The evidence is—within you. I never said more. Find it there, man!"
"I thought so," the doctor replied in a cold voice.
Chris spoke persuasively. "You could work a miracle of transformation within yourself. But—even if I should suspend the very forces upon which that possibility depends—you would exert the last resource of your ingenuity to find out by what mechanical trick I achieved your illusion, as you'd call it! Prove, doctor, that you would not!"
"Let's see the experiment." Sopho's eyes were hard.
The stranger thought a moment and presently chuckled to himself. "The unsolved riddle of the cause—the source—the nature—of the energy in your atoms, doctor! Would you like to understand that next step in your science?"
"Impossible!"