I listened to their talk with little real comprehension. I was wondering what would be the outcome of the scene I had just witnessed. I seemed to be sitting in some theater, watching a drama of intense interest, with its thrills of pathos and human agony, and its snatches of comic relief. While the clown was setting the audience in a roar with his unconscious buffoonery the sad-hearted heroine was waiting in the wings to harrow us in the next breath. And was it so in sober earnest? Was Maggie Hutchinson waiting, in her far-off Round Castle on the shores of Como, fully aware of the farce being enacted in the restaurant, and ready to take her cue when the moment arrived for her tribulation? How could I be sure? Was it possible to be certain of anything when all the common laws of nature were being turned topsy-turvy by a youngster whose weird powers were as yet but vaguely acknowledged by those few doubting believers acquainted with them? I have often looked back on that extraordinary dinner in the Pall Mall Hotel. I know now that a great deal was revealed to me in that hour, but I was so overcome by the exciting outward aspects of the manifestations that I missed the inward message they carried. I am not alone in this crass blindness to hidden truth. When Gounod wrote the opera which gave Karl the text for Steindal’s undoing, Mr. Gye, the then chief operatic manager of London, saw nothing in it but “a waltz and a chorus of old men.” Paris would not have it. The Théâtre Lyrique produced it with financial loss. And one man, Choudens, thought he was taking a tremendous risk when he purchased the publishing rights for £400. Happy Choudens! He cleared nearly £120,000 by the venture. Yet _Faust_ was as great in 1839 as it is to-day. Only man has become enlightened. I was brought to see things clearly in much less than half a century. But it saddens me to know how much I missed while Steindal was singing his devil’s song and gyrating on his head and hands! CHAPTER XXI HOOPER SUGGESTS A WAY OUT Though Steindal was gone, we remained the center of observation. Perhaps others wondered, like Scapin, what the deuce he was doing in our boat. Karl, who was distinctly fatigued, did that which I had never seen him do before--he drank some wine. He seemed to be willing enough to talk freely, but held in leash by the presence of so many strangers. Hooper, I knew, was consumed with impatience, but he preserved the outward demeanor of a North American Indian. So there was a common agreement when I suggested that my sitting-room was the right place in which to smoke. Once there, Hooper threw aside the mask. “I have the accumulated questions of five years to fire at you. Are you ready?” he said to Karl. “Quite ready. I would only ask you to remember that a Hindu ascetic once devoted thirty years to the consideration of one great question: ‘Whence?’ and when he emerged from retirement he astonished his disciples by merely propounding another: ‘Whither?’”