y nervous fear, every emotional horror of those last few minutes,
share the bitterness of the disillusionment inevitable when three or
four thousand ordinary, every-day human beings are dying in despair,
because, as they would judge it, dying so needlessly. To get the full
measure of it, and to share also in the sweetness and resignation of
great souls in the hour of death, would not his mortal body have to meet
death, even as the others?"

Meade readjusted his horned spectacles. He would have to revise his
notes of the man, that was plain. Forty, or forty-five possibly, he was.
Tall and large-framed, but spare, thin-cheeked, and hollow-templed, with
white streaks among the close-clipped, very black, and very thick hair
which showed from under his cap. A worn-looking man, a student. M-m--he
had him now--a teacher of the classics in some college, possibly a young
women's college.

"To get back to our steamer and your extraordinary proposition,"
suggested Meade; "you say that the man should actually die?"

"Surely die. And he should face death even as our highly vitalized young
friend here faces life. Mr. Cadogan, coming back to us from perilous
experiences, makes us share with him in every tremor, every dread, every
thought he himself felt in his adventure. And how does he manage to do
that? Isn't it because in the perilous moment his soul remains tranquil?
If death comes, well and good--it cannot be helped; if not, then a
glorious adventure. He meets danger with every faculty keyed up to the
highest. Now, if a man would meet his death, as this steamer went down,
in the same mood, would he not march into the shadows with a soul
ennobled?"

"And then what?"

"Then? If we are heirs in spirit even as in body will God ever allow a
great spirit to become extinct?"

Meade abandoned his young-ladies'-teacher supposition. He speared the
man with another glance. "Pardon me, you are not a scientist?"

Lavis smiled--for the first time. "Do I talk like one?"

"You do not believe, then, in present-day scientific methods?"

"I believe in any constructive method, but"--he betrayed a shadow of
impatience--"why limit our beliefs to what can be proved with a
surgeon's knife?"

Meade thought he remembered that Roman Catholic priests were on special
occasions allowed to travel without the outer garb of their calling; but
would a priest talk so freely to a stranger? And yet--"You must have had
a religious training at some time in