Sometimes this essence--not necessarily the finest element in a man's or
a woman's nature, but soul-stuff that we lack--disappears. In fact, it
invariably disappears. It may be that it has been transformed in the
processes of their growth; it may also be that it has utterly vanished
by some inadvertence, or that we ourselves have absorbed it." "Then we throw them away?" Ethel asked, pale, but dry-eyed. A shudder
passed through her body and she clinched her glass nervously. At that
moment Reginald resembled a veritable Prince of Darkness, sinister and
beautiful, painted by the hand of a modern master. Then, for a space, he
again became the man of the world. Smiling and self-possessed, he filled
the glasses, took a long sip of the wine and resumed his narrative. "That boy was followed by others. I absorbed many useless things and
some that were evil. I realised that I must direct my absorptive
propensities. This I did. I selected, selected well. And all the time
the terrible power of which I was only half conscious grew within me." "It is indeed a terrible power," she cried; "all the more terrible for
its subtlety. Had I not myself been its victim, I should not now find it
possible to believe in it." "The invisible hand that smites in the dark is certainly more fearful
than a visible foe. It is also more merciful. Think how much you would
have suffered had you been conscious of your loss." "Still it seems even now to me that it cannot have been an utter,
irreparable loss. There is no action without reaction. Even I--even
we--must have received from you some compensation for what you have
taken away." "In the ordinary processes of life the law of action and reaction is
indeed potent. But no law is without exception. Think of radium, for
instance, with its constant and seemingly inexhaustible outflow of
energy. It is a difficult thing to imagine, but our scientific men have
accepted it as a fact. Why should we find it more difficult to conceive
of a tremendous and infinite absorptive element? I feel sure that it
must somewhere exist. But every phenomenon in the physical world finds
its counterpart in the psychical universe. There are radium-souls that
radiate without loss of energy, but also without increase. And there are
souls, the reverse of radium, with unlimited absorptive capacities." "Vampire-souls," she observed, with a shudder, and her face blanched. "No," he said, "don't say that." And then he suddenly seemed to grow in
stature. His face was ablaze, like the face of a god. "In every age," he replied, with solemnity, "there are giants who attain
to a greatness which by natural growth no men could ever have reached. But in their youth a vision came to them, which they set out to seek. They take the stones of fancy to build them a palace in the kingdom of
truth, projecting into reality dreams, monstrous and impossible. Often
they fail and, tumbling from their airy heights, end a quixotic career. Some succeed. They are the chosen. Carpenter's sons they are, who have
laid down the Law of a World for milleniums to come; or simple
Corsicans, before whose eagle eye have quaked the kingdoms of the earth. But to accomplish their mission they need a will of iron and the wit of
a hundred men. And from the iron they take the strength, and from a
hundred men's brains they absorb their wisdom. Divine missionaries, they
appear in all departments of life. In their hand is gathered to-day the
gold of the world. Mighty potentates of peace and war, they unlock new
seas and from distant continents lift the bars. Single-handed, they
accomplish what nations dared not hope; with Titan strides they scale
the stars and succeed where millions fail. In art they live, the makers
of new periods, the dreamers of new styles. They make themselves the
vocal sun-glasses of God. Homer and Shakespeare, Hugo and Balzac--they
concentrate the dispersed rays of a thousand lesser luminaries in one
singing flame that, like a giant torch, lights up humanity's path." She gazed at him, open-mouthed. The light had gone from his visage. He
paused, exhausted, but even then he looked the incarnation of a force no
less terrible, no less grand. She grasped the immensity of his
conception, but her woman's soul rebelled at the horrible injustice to
those whose light is extinguished, as hers had been, to feed an alien
flame. And then, for a moment, she saw the pale face of Ernest staring
at her out of the wine. "Cruel," she sobbed, "how cruel!" "What matter?" he asked. "Their strength is taken from them, but the
spirit of humanity, as embodied in us, triumphantly marches on." XXI


Reginald's revelations were followed by a long silence, interrupted only
by the officiousness of the waiter. The spell once broken, they
exchanged a number of more or less irrelevant observations. Ethel's mind
returned, again and again, to the word he had not spoken. He had said
nothing of the immediate bearing of his monstrous power upon her own
life and that of Ernest Fielding. At last, somewhat timidly, she approached the subject. "You said you loved me," she remarked. "I did." "But why, then--"

"I could not help it." "Did you ever make the slightest attempt?" "In the horrible night hours I struggled against it. I even implored you
to leave me." "Ah, but I loved you!" "You would not be warned, you would not listen. You stayed with me, and
slowly, surely, the creative urge went out of your life." "But what on earth could you find in my poor art to attract you? What
were my pictures to you?" "I needed them, I needed you. It was a certain something, a rich colour
effect, perhaps. And then, under your very eyes, the colour that
vanished from your canvases reappeared in my prose. My style became more
luxurious than it had been, while you tortured your soul in the vain
attempt of calling back to your brush what was irretrievably lost." "Why did you not tell me?" "You would have laughed in my face, and I could not have endured your
laugh. Besides, I always hoped, until it was too late, that I might yet
check the mysterious power within me. Soon, however, I became aware that
it was beyond my control. The unknown god, whose instrument I am, had
wisely made it stronger than me." "But why," retorted Ethel, "was it necessary to discard me, like a
cast-off garment, like a wanton who has lost the power to please?" Her frame shook with the remembered emotion of that moment, when years
ago he had politely told her that she was nothing to him. "The law of being," Reginald replied, almost sadly, "the law of my
being. I should have pitied you, but the eternal reproach of your
suffering only provoked my anger. I cared less for you every day, and
when I had absorbed all of you that my growth required, you were to me
as one dead, as a stranger you were. There was between us no further
community of interest; henceforth, I knew, our lives must move in
totally different spheres. You remember that day when we said good-bye?"