"Oh, I never feared it," he said, "in the sense that I ever imagined it would baffle me. How could it? Nothing can possibly interfere with truth. But sometimes--sometimes when error has gone very deep, and has been allowed to rest there, you tap a sort of fresh reservoir of it just when you think you are getting to the end of it. In one sense, I suppose, I have feared that. It may not happen, I have no reason to believe that it will, but I have seen very sudden attacks and onslaughts of the most violent kind, even when one thought the cure was practically complete." "But surely he has made marvellous progress," said Maud. "Think; it is only four days since you began to treat him." "Yes; no one progress is more marvellous than any other, since all progress is right, but it has been very smooth sailing so far. And--I don't care whether I am being heretical or not, but I think I am--conditions have been very favourable. Weather, climate, all external influences, have a great effect. They have no real power to help or hinder, but when a soul is bound by a material habit material conditions do come in. It is no use to say otherwise. The depression caused by a wet, windy day, such as to-day, is certainly a false claim, but it goes and hobnobs with other false claims, and they sit round the fire and talk.... But, take it as a whole, those who believe are less affected by such things than those who do not. Mental worry is less felt by the Scientist, because he knows it does not really exist. So he will discount the depressing influences of weather; he won't so much mind a windy or an oppressive day." "And doesn't weather ever upset you?" asked Maud. He laughed. "Oh dear, yes," he said. "I've been having false claims all over me all day, like--like a shower-bath, and all day I've been reversing them till I'm dizzy." "You have looked serene enough," she said. "I shouldn't have guessed it." "Well, I hope not, since it is by the serenity that comes from complete conviction of the one Omnipotence that you fight them. If you abandon that, what are you to fight them with?" He looked at her, smiling; but then his smile faded, for he felt for a moment that, in spite of himself, his love must betray itself by word or gesture. And surely there was some answering struggle going on in her, or was it only sympathy, only gratitude for what he had done, that made that beacon in her eyes? Whatever it was she had it in control also. "Won't you tell me of them?" she asked. "Sometimes telling a thing, the very putting of it into definite words, shows us how shadowy and indefinite it really is. I--I don't ask from inquisitiveness."