Thurso was undeniably in a very bad humour by this time. He felt convinced in his own mind that there had been some hypnotic force or suggestive influence used on him last night; but when a man denies it, and simply attributes all that has happened to the working of Divine Love, you cannot contradict him. Maud, however, had read to him last night out of some Christian Science book, and he had found, he thought, a hundred inconsistencies in it. Cochrane's last words, too, were utterly inconsistent, simple as they sounded. "How can you say it is cold," he asked, "when your whole Gospel is rooted, so I understand, in the unreality of all such things--cold, heat, pain, and so on? Or did I misunderstand, do you think, what Maud read to me last night? I certainly gathered that neither cold nor heat had any real existence." "No; but we think it has," said Cochrane, with his mouth full. "Then, is it not what the Reverend Mrs. Eddy calls 'voicing error' to allude to the temperature of the morning?" Cochrane laughed, a great big genial laugh. "Oh, we don't--at least, I don't--make any claim to be beyond feeling cold or heat when there is no reason for not feeling it." "I beg your pardon." Cochrane still looked amused and quite patient. "Well, if for any cause it was necessary that I, in healing you, should have to stand in a tub of ice-cold water, I don't imagine it would affect me much. There would be a reason for my doing it. But in the ordinary way we say, 'This is cold, this is hot.' They don't hurt. My time is taken up in denying things that do hurt." "Though nothing hurts." "False belief hurts, and its consequences." Maud joined in. Thurso was being tiresome and irritable. "Dear Thurso, pass the marmalade, please. I have a false claim of wanting some, so don't tell me there isn't any. I propose to indulge my false claim. Oh, don't be severe with us; it is such a pity, and spoils my pleasure." "I was merely inquiring into these matters," said Thurso rather acidly, for his mind still chafed at the trick, or so he called it, that had made him go to sleep last night. Maud's false claim of wanting marmalade was soon satisfied, and she got up. "Now, Mr. Cochrane has promised to give me instruction for half an hour, Thurso," she said, "and after that I vote we go out. There's a lake, he says, not far off. We might skate." "And what is to happen to me?" he asked. "Am I to have treatment or laudanum, or to be put to sleep again?" Bertie Cochrane looked up at him suddenly. For half a second he allowed himself to be stung, affronted, by Thurso's tone. But he recovered immediately. "Now, honestly, which would you like best?" he asked. Then, though the moment was, as measured by time, an infinitesimal one, in eternity his soul had thrown itself at the foot of Infinite Love, reminding Him of His promise, like a child, calling Him to help.