To my surprise he laughed with great amusement. He stood there, young, pleasant, and smiling. I stared at him with a curious uneasiness. For the moment I had forgotten what it had been my intention to say. The dawn of Immortality passed out of my mind, and I found myself gazing, as it were, on something strangely mysterious. "Your religion helps you?" I hazarded. "Religion?" He mused for a moment. "Don't you think there is some meaning behind our particular inevitable destinies--that we may perhaps have earned them?" "Nonsense! It is all the cruel caprice of Nature, and nothing else." "Oh, come, Dr. Harden, you surely take a larger view. Do you think the short existence we have here is all the chance of activity we ever have? That I have a glimpse of engineering, and you have a short phase of doctoring on this planet, and that then we have finished all experience?" "Certainly. It would not be possible to take any other view--horrible." "But you believe in some theory of evolution--of slow upward progress?" "Yes, of course. That is proved beyond all doubt." "And yet you think it applies only to the body--to the instrument--and not to the immaterial side of us?" I stared at him in astonishment. "I do not think there is any immaterial side, Mr. Thornduck." He smiled. "A very unsatisfying view, surely?" he remarked. "Unsatisfying, perhaps, but sound science," I retorted. "Sound?" He pondered for an instant. "Can a thing be sound and unsatisfying at the same time? When I see a machine that's ugly--that's unsatisfying from the artist's point of view--I always know it's wrongly planned and inefficient. Don't you think it's the same with theories of life?" He took out his watch and glanced at it. "But I must not keep you. Good-bye, Dr. Harden." He went to the door, nodded, and left the room before I recalled that I meant to hint to him that a miracle was going to happen, and save his life. I remained on the hearth-rug, wondering what on earth he meant. CHAPTER VII LEONORA I found a note in the hall from Sarakoff asking me to come round to the Pyramid Restaurant at eight o'clock to meet a friend of his. It was a crisp clear evening, and I decided to walk. There were two problems on my mind. One was the outlook of Sarakoff, which even I deemed to be too materialistic. The other was the attitude of young Thornduck, which was obviously absurd. In my top hat and solemn frock-coat I paced slowly down Harley Street.