"Well, it is something like that," I answered huskily, as I wondered what she might know or dream of that which lay beyond the ken of the gross materialism of her race. "Immortality is a very beautiful idea," I went on, "and science has destroyed much that is beautiful. But it is a pity that Col. Hellar had to eliminate the idea of immortality from the German Bible. Surely such a book makes no pretence of being scientific." "So Col. Hellar has told you that he wrote 'God's Anointed'?" exclaimed Marguerite with eager interest. "Yes, he told me of that and I re-read the book with an entirely different viewpoint since I came to understand the spirit in which it was written." "Ah--I see." Marguerite rose and stepped toward the library. "We have a book here," she called, "that you have not read, and one that you cannot buy. It will show you the source of Col. Hellar's inspiration." She brought out a battered volume. "This book," she stated, "has given the inspectors more trouble than any other book in existence. Though they have searched for thirty years, they say there are more copies of it still at large than of all other forbidden books combined." I gazed at the volume she handed me--I was holding a copy of the Christian Bible translated six centuries previous by Martin Luther. It was indeed the very text from which as a boy I had acquired much of my reading knowledge of the language. But I decided that I had best not reveal to Marguerite my familiarity with it, and so I sat down and turned the pages with assumed perplexity. "It is a very odd book," I remarked presently. "Have you read it?" "Oh, yes," exclaimed Marguerite. "I often read it; I think it is more interesting than all these modern books, but perhaps that is because I cannot understand it; I love mysterious things." "There is too much of it for a man as busy as I am to hope to read," I remarked, after turning a few more pages, "and so I had better not begin. Will you not choose something and read it aloud to me?" Marguerite declined at first; but, when I insisted, she took the tattered Bible and turned slowly through its pages. And when she read, it was the story of a king who revelled with his lords, and of a hand that wrote upon a wall. Her voice was low, and possessed a rhythm and cadence that transmuted the guttural German tongue into musical poetry. Again she read, of a man who, though shorn of his strength by the wiles of a woman and blinded by his enemies, yet pushed asunder the pillars of a city. At random she read other tales, of rulers and of slaves, of harlots and of queens--the wisdom of prophets--the songs of kings.