‘Marston went wrong, then, in the end?’ for the other’s manner suggested disaster of some kind. Hendricks asked it in a whisper. Leysin uncovered his face, looped his neck with one finger, and pointed to the ceiling. ‘Hanged himself!’ murmured Hendricks, shocked. The Pasteur nodded, but there was impatience, half anger in his tone. ‘They checked it, kept it in. Of course, it tore him!’ The two men looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, and something in the younger of them shrank. This was all beyond his ken a little. An odd hint of bleak and cruel reality was in the air, making him shiver along nerves that were normally inactive. The uneasiness he felt about Lord Ernie became alarm. His conscience pricked him. ‘More than he could assimilate,’ continued Leysin. ‘It broke him. Yet, had outlets been provided, had he been taught how to use it, this elemental energy drawn direct from Nature----’ He broke off abruptly, struck perhaps by the expression in his listener’s eyes. ‘It seems incredible, doesn’t it, in the twentieth century? I know.’ ‘Evil?’ asked Hendricks, stammering rather. ‘Why evil?’ was the impatient reply. ‘How can any force be evil? That’s merely a question of direction.’ ‘And the priest who discovered these forces and taught their use, then----?’ ‘Was genuinely spiritual and followed the truth in his own way. He was not necessarily evil.’ The little Pasteur spoke with vehemence. ‘You talk like the religion-primers in the kindergarten,’ he went on. ‘Listen. This man, sick and weary of his lukewarm flock, sought vital, stalwart systems who might be clean enough to use the elemental powers he had discovered how to attract. Only the bias of the users could make it “evil” by wrong use. His idea was big and even holy--to train a corps that might regenerate the world. And he chose unreasoning, unintellectual types with a purpose--primitive, giant men who could assimilate the force without risk of being shattered. Under his direction he intended they should prove as effective as the twelve disciples of old who were fisher-folk. And, had he gone on----’ ‘He, too, failed then?’ asked the other, whose tangled thoughts struggled with incredulity and belief as he heard this strange new thing. ‘He died, you mean?’ ‘_Maison de santé_,’ was the laconic reply, ‘strait-waistcoats, padded cells, and the rest; but still alive, I’m told. It was more than he could manage.’ It was a startling story, even in this brief outline, deep suggestion in it. The tutor’s sense of being out of his depth increased. After nine months with a lifeless, devitalised human being, this was--well, he seemed to have fallen in his sleep from a comfortable bed into a raging mountain torrent. Strong currents rushed through and over him. The lonely, peaceful village outside, sleeping beneath the stars, heightened the contrast.