first to show
me the way, though I don't think he ever found it himself. That is a
strange saying of his: "In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the
soul of a star."'

There was not much of furniture in the laboratory. The table in the
centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs on
which Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that was all, except an
odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the room. Clarke looked at it,
and raised his eyebrows.

'Yes, that is the chair,' said Raymond. 'We may as well place it in
position,' He got up and wheeled the chair to the light, and began
raising and lowering it, letting down the seat, setting the back at
various angles, and adjusting the foot-rest. It looked comfortable
enough, and Clarke passed his hand over the soft green velvet, as the
doctor manipulated the levers.

'Now, Clarke, make yourself quite comfortable. I have a couple of
hours' work before me; I was obliged to leave certain matters to the
last.'

Raymond went to the stone slab, and Clarke watched him drearily as he
bent over a row of phials and lit the flame under the crucible. The
doctor had a small hand-lamp, shaded as the larger one, on a ledge above
his apparatus, and Clarke, who sat in the shadows, looked down the great
dreary room, wondering at the bizarre effects of brilliant light and
undefined darkness contrasting with one another. Soon he became
conscious of an odd odour, at first the merest suggestion of odour, in
the room; and as it grew more decided he felt surprised that he was not
reminded of the chemist's shop or the surgery. Clarke found himself idly
endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and, half conscious, he began to
think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had spent in roaming through
the woods and meadows near his old home. It was a burning day at the
beginning of August, the heat had dimmed the outlines of all things and
all distances with a faint mist, and people who observed the thermometer
spoke of an abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost
tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day of the 'fifties rose up in
Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight
seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he
felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the
shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad murmur of the summer.

'I hope the smell doesn't annoy you, Clarke; there's nothing unwho