Catherine turned her eyes upon me in wide-open amazement.

"He must be mad!" she said.

I made no reply either by word or look. We heard Mr. Harland
talking, but in a lower tone, and we could not distinguish what he
said. Presently Santoris answered, and his vibrant tones were clear
and distinct.

"Why should it seem to you so wonderful?" he said--"You do not think
it miraculous when the sculptor, standing before a shapeless block
of marble, hews it out to conformity with his inward thought. The
marble is mere marble, hard to deal with, difficult to shape,--yet
out of its resisting roughness the thinker and worker can mould an
Apollo or a Psyche. You find nothing marvellous in this, though the
result of its shaping is due to nothing but Thought and Labour. Yet
when you see the human body, which is far easier to shape than
marble, brought into submission by the same forces of Thought and
Labour, you are astonished! Surely it is a simpler matter to control
the living cells of one's own fleshly organisation and compel them
to do the bidding of the dominating spirit than to chisel the
semblance of a god out of a block of stone!"

There was a pause after this. Then followed more inaudible talk on
the part of Mr. Harland, and while we yet waited to gather further
fragments of the conversation, he suddenly threw open the saloon
door and called to us to come in. We at once obeyed the summons, and
as we entered he said in a somewhat excited, nervous way:--

"I must apologise before you ladies for the rather doubting manner