“Not exactly. But his notion of keeping the mind blank for impressions has its points. If you throw off the clutch of the brain, as it were, and let it work along its own lines, it sometimes arranges and formulates ideas that you wouldn’t get from it under control.”
“Sort of self-hypnosis?”
“In a sense. For years I’ve kept a bare white room in my Washington house to do my hard thinking in. When your affair promised to become difficult for me, I rigged up this spot. And I’m trying to see things against the walls.”
“Any particular kind of things?”
Kent produced the silver star from his pocket, and told of its discovery. “The stars in their courses may have fought against Sisera,” he remarked; “but they aren’t going out of their way to fight—to fight—to—to—” Kent’s jaw was sagging down. His lean fingers pulled savagely at the lobe of his long-suffering ear. “The stars in their courses—in their courses—That’s it!” he half whispered. “Sedgwick; what was it your visitor said to you about Jupiter?”
“She didn’t mention Jupiter.”
“No, of course not. Not by name. But what was it she said about the planet that she pointed out, over the sea?”
“Oh; was that Jupiter? How did you know?”
“Looked last night, of course,” said Kent impatiently. “There’s no other planet conspicuous over the sea at that hour, from where you stood. That’s not important; at least, not now. What did she say?”
“Oh, some rot about daring to follow her star and find happiness, and that perhaps it might lead me to glory or something.”