he seemed to challenge some invisible opponent. Heliobas meanwhile
watched him much as a physician might watch in his patient the
workings of a new disease, then he said in purposely cold and
tranquil tones:

"A bold idea! singularly blasphemous, arrogant, and--fortunately
for us all--impracticable! Allow me to remark that you are
overexcited, Mr. Alwyn; you talk as madmen may, but as reasonable
men should not. Come," and he smiled,--a smile that was both grave
and sweet, "come and sit down--you are worn out with the force of
your own desperate emotions--rest a few minutes and recover your
self."

His voice thouqh gentle was distinctly authoritative, and Alwyn
meeting the full gaze of his calm eyes felt bound to obey the
implied command. He therefore sank listlessly into an easy chair
near the table, pushing back the short, thick curls from his brow
with a wearied movement; he was very pale,--an uneasy sense of
shame was upon him, and he sighed,--a quick sigh of exhausted
passion. Heliobas seated himself opposite and looked at him
earnestly, he studied with sympathetic attention the lines of
dejection and fatigue which marred the attractiveness of features
otherwise frank, poetic, and noble. He had seen many such men. Men
in their prime who had begun life full of high faith, hope, and
lofty aspiration, yet whose fair ideals once bruised in the mortar
of modern atheistical opinion had perished forever, while they
themselves, like golden eagles suddenly and cruelly shot while
flying in mid-air, had fallen helplessly, broken-winged among the
dust-heaps of the world, never to rise and soar sunwards again.
Thinking this, his accents were touched with a certain compassion