"What a powerful drug this love is!" he said. "It's as unexpected in its action as ether! My dear William, you are worrying yourself about nothing. I'm sure of it. Remember that you can't look at the thing with an unprejudiced eye. It's all quite clear to me. Miss Poole simply wants to wait until she has seen your triumph with her own eyes. That is all, believe me. You are in too much of a hurry. How curious that is! It is the strangest thing in the world to find _you_--you of all men--in a hurry. It is only by monumental and marvellous patience that you have succeeded in discovering a law, and applying that law with my help, which makes you the greatest man of science the world has ever known. And yet you leap at the fence of a girl's hesitation and reserve as if everything depended on breaking a record for the jump!" Gouldesbrough smiled faintly and shook his head. He was not convinced, but it was plain that he was comforted by what Guest had said. His smile was melancholy and gently sad; and in the electric radiance of the huge mysterious room he seemed like some eager and kindly priest or minister who bewailed the sins of his flock, but with a humorous and human understanding of mortal frailty. And there he stood, the greatest genius of modern times, and also one of the most cruel and criminal of living men. Yet so strange and tortuous is the human soul, so enslaved can conscience be by the abnormal mind, that he thought of himself as nothing but a devoted lover. His passion and desire for this girl were horrible in their egotism and their intensity alike. But the man with the marvellous brain thought that the one thing which set him apart from the herd and redeemed him for his crime was his love for Marjorie Poole. He really, honestly and truly, believed that! It was not without reason that Donald Megbie had seen the blaze of insanity in Sir William's eyes. A supreme genius is very seldom sane. Professor Lombroso has said so, Max Nordau agitated scientific Europe by saying it a few years ago. Yet some one more important said it many years before-- "Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide." "So the matter rests there?" Guest asked. "Yes," Sir William answered; "but I have altered the day of the demonstration. There is no need to wait after all! Everything is prepared. I have sent out cards for Friday next, three days from now." Guest poured out some more of the spirit. He laughed rather contemptuously. "Can't wait, then!" he said. "I'm glad I'm free from these entanglements, William. Of course it doesn't matter when the people come to see the thing at work. As you say, everything is quite ready. But there is another thing to be considered. What about Rathbone? He's no more use to us now, and he must be got rid of. Shall I go down-stairs and kill him?" He said it with the indifference with which he might have proposed to wash his hands. CHAPTER XIX