many generations has
been granted the power to sway thought, which nature has bestowed upon
you. Your word may well prevail against all things--even in time against
Rome. You recognise that you are about to take up a mighty weapon?"

"I do. Publicity is the lever of which Archimedes dreamed; and I confess
that I tremble. You think the churches will oppose me?"

"Can you doubt it?"

"I fear you are right, yet they should be my allies, not my enemies. In
the spectacle of a world in arms the churches must surely recognise the
evidence of failure. If they would survive they must open their doors to
reform."

"And what is the nature of the reform you would suggest?"

"Conversion from nineteen centuries of error to the simple creed of
their Founder."

"Impossible. Churches, like Russian securities, may be destroyed but
never converted."

"Yet in their secret hearts millions of professed churchmen believe as I
believe----"

"----That heaven and hell are within every man's own soul and that the
state in which he is born is the state for which he has fitted himself
by the acts of his pre-existence?"

Paul inclined his head. "No other belief is possible to-day."

"There are higher planets than Earth, perhaps lower. The ultimate deep
is Hell, the ultimate height Heaven. The universe is a ladder which
every soul must climb."

From a catechism Jules Thessaly's words had developed into a profession
of faith, and Paul, who stood watching the speaker, grew suddenly
aware--a phenomenon which all have experienced--that such a profession
had been made to him before, that he had stood thus on some other
occasion and had heard the same words spoken. He knew what Jules
Thessaly was about to say.

"The knowledge which is yours is innate knowledge beyond human power to
acquire in one short span of life; it is the result of many lives
devoted to study. For the task you are about to take up you have been
preparing since the world was young. All is ordained, even your presence
in this room to-night--and mine. Where last did we meet--where first?
Perhaps in Rome, perhaps Atlantis; but assuredly we met and we meet
again to fulfil a compact made in the dawn of time. I, too, am a student
of the recondite, and it may be that some of the fragments of truth
which I have collected will help you to force recognition of the light
from a world plunged in darkness."

"In utter darkness," murmured Paul. And clearly before him--so clearly
as