“Lien Weng claims more for it than that, much more. One’s actions can be controlled from a distance, without physical contact of any kind, simply by the massed power of thought.” “How horrid! And how uncomfortable!” “It is, I grant you. But we live in an uncomfortable world.” “Isn’t the world largely what we make it?” said Helen softly. “A week ago one would have said yes. But I’ve had a knock on the head since then. Everything is altered.” He forced a sudden laugh which jarred a little on Helen’s nerves. “But, to return to this diabolically clever old Chinaman. I’m swotting up his book, because this day fortnight--touching wood!--I shall be at Doe Hill at Rose Carburton’s, and the great Lien Weng himself is expected to be there. So you see one is likely to hear a great deal about his theory.” “Rather too much about it, perhaps,” said Helen chaffingly. “He might consider you a fit subject for one of his experiments.” Clearly she was not inclined to take Lien Weng too seriously. John for his part, however, was impressed by something he had read in a book which had caused a flutter in the dovecotes of science; or it may have been something he had heard as to the reputation of its writer. “Great discoveries are in the air,” he said. “No doubt,” said Helen. “At any rate, George Hierons thinks so.” “Hierons the inventor. You know him?” “I used to know him at home. And I met him again, the first time for some years, at dinner the other night. He had just arrived from Ottawa, although like myself I’m proud to say he’s an American citizen.” “Yes, a wonderful man. Another Edison, people seem to think. I met him in New York last year. He impressed me enormously. For a man still young he’s gone a long way already on his own lines, and he’s expected to go farther. His grasp of general world conditions and their relation to modern thought in its present state of continual flux was amazing.” Helen agreed. She too, was quite fascinated by him. Apart from his work, the importance of which could hardly be exaggerated, George Hierons had the mind of a seer. There was a note, however, in this enthusiasm which suddenly cast Endor into an odd change of mood. “Let us hope,” he said, with a melancholy so intense that to Helen it was like a blow over the heart, “that he won’t try too much. To me that seemed his danger. Wasn’t it Goethe who said that man must learn first to know where his problem begins? Minds of the Hierons’ type don’t always recognize how small are the resources of humanity. The best, the wisest, the strongest, all are in chains. Man is a slave.” Helen was unready to accept so hard a saying. “One can but read the riddle by the inner light,” Endor went on. “Since this time last week I have shed many illusions. Now am I fully awake, having lived forty years, to the fact that man is chained in a galley or, if you prefer the figure, harnessed to a chariot with the Furies in charge.” Helen shivered at the strange light in his dark eyes.