exclaimed the clergyman breathlessly, and with increasing
excitement, "then I feel I must tell you--what has been given to me in
confidence--that Sangree has in him an admixture of savage blood--of Red
Indian ancestry--"

"Let us stick to our supposition of a man as described," the doctor
stopped him calmly, "and let us imagine that he has in him this
admixture of savage blood; and further, that he is wholly unaware of his
dreadful physical and psychical infirmity; and that he suddenly finds
himself leading the primitive life together with the object of his
desires; with the result that the strain of the untamed wild-man in his
blood--"

"Red Indian, for instance," from Maloney. "Red Indian, perfectly," agreed the doctor; "the result, I say, that
this savage strain in him is awakened and leaps into passionate life. What then?" He looked hard at Timothy Maloney, and the clergyman looked hard at him. "The wild life such as you lead here on this island, for instance,
might quickly awaken his savage instincts--his buried instincts--and
with profoundly disquieting results." "You mean his Subtle Body, as you call it, might issue forth
automatically in deep sleep and seek the object of its desire?" I said,
coming to Maloney's aid, who was finding it more and more difficult to
get words. "Precisely;--yet the desire of the man remaining utterly unmalefic--pure
and wholesome in every sense--"

"Ah!" I heard the clergyman gasp. "The lover's desire for union run wild, run savage, tearing its way out
in primitive, untamed fashion, I mean," continued the doctor, striving
to make himself clear to a mind bounded by conventional thought and
knowledge; "for the desire to possess, remember, may easily become
importunate, and, embodied in this animal form of the Subtle Body which
acts as its vehicle, may go forth to tear in pieces all that obstructs,
to reach to the very heart of the loved object and seize it. _Au fond_,
it is nothing more than the aspiration for union, as I said--the
splendid and perfectly clean desire to absorb utterly into itself--"

He paused a moment and looked into Maloney's eyes. "To bathe in the very heart's blood of the one desired," he added with
grave emphasis. The fire spurted and crackled and made me start, but Maloney found
relief in a genuine shudder, and I saw him turn his head and look about
him from the sea to the trees. The wind dropped just at that moment and
the doctor's words rang sharply through the stillness. "Then it might even kill?" stammered the clergyman presently in a hushed
voice, and with a little forced laugh by way of protest that sounded
quite ghastly. "In the last resort it might kill," repeated Dr. Silence. Then, after
another pause, during which he was clearly debating how much or how
little it was wise to give to his audience, he continued: "And if the
Double does not succeed in getting back to its physical body, that
physical body would wake an imbecile--an idiot--or perhaps never wake at
all." Maloney sat up and found his tongue. "You mean that if this fluid animal thing, or whatever it is, should be
prevented getting back, the man might never wake again?" he asked, with
shaking voice. "He might be dead," replied the other calmly. The tremor of a positive
sensation shivered in the air about us. "Then isn't that the best way to cure the fool--the brute--?" thundered
the clergyman, half rising to his feet. "Certainly it would be an easy and undiscoverable form of murder," was
the stern reply, spoken as calmly as though it were a remark about the
weather. Maloney collapsed visibly, and I gathered the wood over the fire and
coaxed up a blaze. "The greater part of the man's life--of his vital forces--goes out with
this Double," Dr. Silence resumed, after a moment's consideration, "and
a considerable portion of the actual material of his physical body. So
the physical body that remains behind is depleted, not only of force,
but of matter. You would see it small, shrunken, dropped together, just
like the body of a materialising medium at a seance. Moreover, any mark
or injury inflicted upon this Double will be found exactly reproduced by
the phenomenon of repercussion upon the shrunken physical body lying in
its trance--"

"An injury inflicted upon the one you say would be reproduced also on
the other?" repeated Maloney, his excitement growing again. "Undoubtedly," replied the other quietly; "for there exists all the time
a continuous connection between the physical body and the Double--a
connection of matter, though of exceedingly attenuated, possibly of
etheric, matter. The wound _travels_, so to speak, from one to the
other, and if this connection were broken the result would be death." "Death," repeated Maloney to himself, "death!" He looked anxiously at
our faces, his thoughts evidently beginning to clear. "And this solidity?" he asked presently, after a general pause; "this
tearing of tents and flesh; this howling, and the marks of paws? You
mean that the Double--?" "Has sufficient material drawn from the depleted body to produce
physical results? Certainly!" the doctor took him up. "Although to
explain at this moment such problems as the passage of matter through
matter would be as difficult as to explain how the thought of a mother
can actually break the bones of the child unborn." Dr. Silence pointed out to sea, and Maloney, looking wildly about him,
turned with a violent start. I saw a canoe, with Sangree in the
stern-seat, slowly coming into view round the farther point. His hat was
off, and his tanned face for the first time appeared to me--to us all, I
think--as though it were the face of some one else. He looked like a
wild man. Then he stood up in the canoe to make a cast with the rod, and
he looked for all the world like an Indian. I recalled the expression of
his face as I had seen it once or twice, notably on that occasion of the
evening prayer, and an involuntary shudder ran down my spine. At that very instant he turned and saw us where we lay, and his face
broke into a smile, so that his teeth showed white in the sun. He
looked in his element, and exceedingly attractive. He called out
something about his fish, and soon after passed out of sight into the
lagoon. For a time none of us said a word. "And the cure?" ventured Maloney at length. "Is not to quench this savage force," replied Dr. Silence, "but to steer
it better, and to provide other outlets. This is the solution of all
these problems of accumulated force, for this force is the raw material
of usefulness, and should be increased and cherished, not by separating
it from the body by death, but by raising it to higher channels. The
best and quickest cure of all," he went on, speaking very gently and
with a hand upon the clergyman's arm, "is to lead it towards its object,
provided that object is not unalterably hostile--to let it find rest
where--"

He stopped abruptly, and the eyes of the two men met in a single glance
of comprehension. "Joan?"