“Are you afraid of it?” asked Ommony, shifting his cigar and laying the stone on the desk.
“What is fear?” the jeweler answered. “Is it not recognition of something the senses can not understand and therefore can not master? I think the fact that we feel a sort of fear is proof that we stand on the threshold of new knowledge—or rather, of knowledge that is new to us as individuals.”
“You mean, then, if a policeman’s afraid of a burglar, he’s——”
“Certainly! He is in a position to learn something he never knew before. That doesn’t mean that he will learn, but that he may if he cares to. People used to be afraid of a total eclipse of the sun; some still are afraid of it. Imagine, if you can, what Julius Cæsar, or Alexander the Great, or Timour Ilang, or Akbar would have thought of radio, or a thirty-six-inch astronomical telescope, or a kodak camera.”
“All those things can be explained. This stone is a mystery.”
“Ommonee, everything that we do not yet understand is a mystery. To a pig, it must be a mystery why a man flings turnips to him over the wall of his sty. To that dog of yours it must be a mystery why you took such care to train her. Look into the stone now, Sahib, and tell me what you see.”
“Not I,” said Ommony. “I’ve done it twice. You look.”
Chutter Chand took up the stone in both hands and held it in the light from an overhead window. The thing glowed as if full of liquid-green fire, yet from ten feet away Ommony could see through it the lines on the palm of the jeweler’s hand.
“Interesting! Interesting! Ommonee, the world is full of things we don’t yet know!”
Chutter Chand’s brows contracted, the right side more than the left, in the habit-fixed expression of a man whose business is to use a microscope. Two or three times he glanced away and blinked before looking again. Finally he put the stone back on the desk and wiped his spectacles from force of habit.