that was more than secretarial. He still panted, but with enthusiasm
instead of with regret. In the background loomed always the dim sense of
the Discovery and Experiment approaching inevitably, just as in childhood
the idea of Heaven and Hell had stood waiting to catch him--real only
when he thought carefully about them. Skale was just the kind of man, he
felt, who would make a discovery, so simple that the rest of the world
had overlooked it, so tremendous that it struck at the roots of human
knowledge. He had the simple originality of genius, and a good deal of
its inspirational quality as well.

Before ten days had passed he was following him about like a dog, hanging
upon his lightest word. New currents ran through him mentally and
spiritually as the fires of Mr. Skale's vivid personality quickened his
own, and the impetus of his inner life lifted him with its more violent
momentum. The world of an ordinary man is so circumscribed, so
conventionally molded, that he can scarcely conceive of things that may
dwell normally in the mind of an extraordinary man. Adumbrations of
these, however, may throw their shadow across his field of vision.
Spinrobin was ordinary in most ways, while Mr. Skale was un-ordinary in
nearly all; and thus, living together in this intimate solitude, the
secretary got peeps into his companion's region that gradually convinced
him. With cleaned nerves and vision he began to think in ways and terms
that were new to him. Skale, like some big figure in story or legend,
moved forward into his life and waved a wand. His own smaller personality
began to expand; thoughts entered unannounced that hitherto had not even
knocked at the door, and the frontiers of his mind first wavered, then
unfolded to admit them.

The clergyman's world, whether he himself were mad or sane, was a real
world, alive, vibrating, shortly to produce practical results. Spinrobin