"Then why can't you heal me instantly?" he said. "If error cannot exist in the presence of Divine Love, how is it that time is required for its destruction?" Cochrane laughed. "I haven't the slightest idea," he said; "but, then, I do not profess to be able to explain everything. Sometimes healing is really instantaneous, sometimes it takes time. But if you ask me why, I confess I can't tell you. It is so, though." He got up. "Now I must go," he said, "for though there's no such thing as time really, it is still possible to miss a train. Now keep on making other pictures of this evening to yourself, and say you will go to bed at eleven." Thurso lay back in his big chair after Cochrane had gone, conscious that something else besides laudanum had begun to interest him a little. He felt no leaning or tendency whatever towards Christian Science, and he wanted to find some weak spot in the central theory, some fatal inconsistency, which must invalidate it altogether. There must be one even in the little he had heard about it. At this moment Maud came in. "I've had a long talk to Cochrane," he said, "and he left only ten minutes ago. Maud, give me a Christian Science book; I'm going to prove that it's all wrong." She laughed. "Do, dear; it is the business of everybody to expose error. Shall I read it to you?" "Yes, if you will." Then suddenly his craving began to return, sharpening itself instantaneously to hideous acuteness. His mind was like some light vehicle, from which the driver had been spilled, being galloped away with by the bolting, furious horses of habit. Never before had the stroke fallen upon him with such suddenness. "A fine first-fruit of the value of Christian Science," he said to himself. Yet though its onslaught made him almost dizzy, he retained his presence of mind and the cunning which seemed to have been developed in him since he took to the drug. He mastered his voice completely; he mastered also that watering of the mouth and the automatic swallowing movement of his throat. "Or shall we read after dinner?" he said. "That sleigh-drive made me so sleepy. I think I should drop asleep at once if you began to read." Maud looked at him for a moment with a pity that was instinctive; she could not help it. Then she laughed again. "Oh, Thurso, how transparent!" she said. "You want to go to your bedroom and forge--yes, forge the prescription which you forged with such brilliant success on the steamer, and send it down to the village to get your horrid bottle. It's all very well to forge once or twice, but you really mustn't get in the habit of it; it grows on one dreadfully, I am told." He came towards her white and shaking. "That quack Cochrane has been talking to you, has he," he said. "He promised not to interfere." "He hasn't interfered. You are perfectly free to do what you like. And he is not proved to be a quack yet." He laid his hand on her arm.