get it, shall I be satisfied? Will it fulfil my life's desire? What
IS my life's desire?"

He stood inert--his tall figure erect--his eyes full of strange and
meditative earnestness, and for a moment he seemed to gather his
mental forces together with an effort. Turning towards the table
where the bowl of constantly sparkling fluid danced in tiny flashing
eddies within its crystal prison, he watched its movement.

"There's the clue!" he said--"so little--yet so much! Life that
cannot cease--force that cannot die! For me--for me alone this
secret!--to do with it what I will--to destroy or to re-create! How
shall I use it? If I could sweep the planet clean of its greedy,
contentious human microbes, and found a new race I might be a power
for good,--but should I care to do this? If God does not care, why
should I?"

He lost himself anew in musing--then, rousing his mind to work, he
put paper, pens and ink on the table, and started writing busily--
only interrupting himself once for a light meal of dry bread and
milk during a stretch of six or seven hours. At the end of his self-
appointed time, he went out of the hut to see, as he often expressed
it, "what the sky was doing." It was not doing much, being a mere
hot glare in which the sun was beginning to roll westwards slowly
like a sinking fire-ball. He brought out one of the wicker chairs
from the hut and set it in the only patch of shade by the door,
stretching himself full length upon it, and closing his eyes,
composed himself to sleep. His face in repose was a remarkably
handsome one,--a little hard in outline, but strong, nobly featured
and expressive of power,--an ambitious sculptor would have rejoiced