"What an expression!" Bellingham observed abruptly. He had been staring away toward a low, cloudy film of land in the south. One would have thought that he had heard only the sentence which aroused his comment. Charter was filling with violence. The man's vanity was chained to him like a corpse. This experience of pouring out energy to no purpose aroused in Charter all the forces which had combined to force the public to his work. The thought came that Bellingham was so accustomed to direct the speech and thought of others, mainly women, that he had lost the listening faculty.
"Let me express it, then," Charter declared with his stoutest repression, "that this beautiful surviving element, having finished with the flesh, knows only the attraction of Light. It is the perfect flower of ages of earth-culture, exquisite and inimitable from the weathering centuries, and is radiant for a higher destiny than a cooling planet's crust——"
"My dear young man, you speak very clearly, prettily, and not without force, I may say,—a purely Platonistic gospel."
Charter's mental current was turned off for a second. True or false, the remark was eminently effective. A great man might have said it, or a dilettante.
"In which case, I have a firm foundation."
"But I am essentially of the moderns," said Bellingham.
"Perhaps I should have known that from your first remark—about the brown bodies of the Islanders, rejoicing in the sunlight and bathing in these jewelled seas."
"Ah, yes——" The softening of Bellingham's mouth, as he recalled his own words, injected fresh stimulant into the animus of the other. As Charter feared the eyes, so he had come to loathe the mouth, though he was not pleased with the intensity of his feelings.
"Do you honestly believe that—that which feels the attraction of earth, and becomes a part of earth after death—is the stuff of immortality?" he demanded.
"By marvellous processes of prolongation and refinement—and barring accident—yes."