‘You come at a rather awkward time,’ said Bradley. ‘I seldom or never receive visits on Sunday evening, and to-night especially——’
He paused and coughed uneasily, looking very ill at ease.
‘I understand, I quite understand,’ returned the Professor, gazing up at him in real or assumed admiration. ‘You devote your seventh-day evening to retirement and to meditation. Well, sir, I’m real grieved to disturb you; but sister and I heard you preach this morning, and I may at once tell you that for a good square sermon and elocution fit for the Senate, we never heard anyone to match you, though we’ve heard a few. After hearing you orate, I couldn’t rest till I presented my lines of introduction, and that’s a fact. Sister would have come to you, but a friendly spirit from the planet Mars dropt in just as she was fixing herself, and she had to stay.’
Bradley looked in surprise at the speaker, beginning to fancy that he was conversing with a lunatic; but the Professor’s manner was quite commonplace and matter-of-fact.
‘Have you been long in Europe?’ he asked, hardly knowing what to say.
‘Two months, sir. We have just come from Paris, where we were uncommon well entertained by the American circle. You are aware, of course, that my sister has transcendental gifts?’
‘That she is clairvoyante? So Knowlesworth says in his letter. I may tell you at once that I am a total disbeliever in such matters. I believe spiritualism, even clairvoyance, to be mere imposture.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ said the Professor, without the slightest sign of astonishment or irritation. ‘You don’t believe in solar biology?’
‘I don’t even know what that means,’ answered Bradley with a smile.
‘May I explain, sir? Solar biology is the science which demonstrates our connection with radiant existences of the central luminary of this universe; our dependence and interdependence as spiritual beings on the ebb and flow of consciousness from that shining centre; our life hitherto, now, and hereafter, as solar elements. We are sunbeams, sir, materialised; thought is psychic sunlight. On the basis of that great principle is established the reality of our correspondence with spiritual substances, alien to us, existing in the other solar worlds.’