“I know nothing! My good Mrs. Battleby arranges all these little affairs for me! I had a good breakfast before I started this morning, but as for the mid-day meal--well, it is difficult for me to eat when I am tired, and even if I could, it would be still more difficult to digest. My stomach is feeble, Steinberg. If you could give me a new stomach, my kind friend, I know you would, but it is impossible. The machine will go on working a little longer, and for myself I care not how soon it may stop altogether!” “No! no! you must not say that! Why! you are not fifty yet. You have a good thirty years before you in which to enjoy life and make your friends happy.” “Friends, Steinberg! with the exception of yourself, where are my friends?” “O! you have more than you think for, Signor, and at all events one is enough to try and make you look after yourself. You are not so weak as you imagine. If you would rest by night, you would not feel the fatigue of the day so much. But these studies that you will pursue, are killing you! They would try the strength of the strongest man, repeated as they are with you, night after night, but added to the strain made upon your physical and mental faculties by day, they will end by landing you in your grave!” “Then I shall have gained my desire,” said the Professor, with a faint smile, “and the Great Secret will be solved!” “Perhaps! but why, then, not wait for the Change which must inevitably come to all of us, to discover what lies beyond?” “Ah! you do not know--you do not understand----” said the Professor, “my heart is being burnt up with longing and desire. I cannot rest! there is no peace for me unless I am striving to find out one thing--to solve one mystery--I feel as if I cannot die until I have found it out!” “Found _what_ out?” repeated Steinberg, “what is this secret you are so eager to discover the solution of? Will you not confide it to me?” The Signor looked at the young scientist curiously, as though questioning whether he could trust him. Presently the gloom cleared off his brow and he murmured, “Why not? You are my friend--my only friend. You would preserve it as I have done. But will you join me in trying to find the Secret out? Will you also dip into the mysteries of Occultism, and hold converse with the Unseen World?”