what Hammer suggested. I don't know what kind of magic it is."

"Of course it _is_ magic," said Thornduck.

"Magic?"

"Of course. Have you even thought what kind of magic it is?"

"No."

"A big magic, such as you have worked, is just bringing the distant
future into the present with a rush."

"Sarakoff had some such idea," I murmured. "He spoke of anticipating
our evolution by centuries at one stroke."

"Exactly. That's magic. The question remains--is it black magic?" He
crossed his thin legs and leaned back in the chair. "I got the Blue
Disease the day before yesterday and since then I've thought more than I
have ever done in all my life. When I read in the paper this morning
that you said the Blue Disease conferred immortality on people I was not
surprised. I had come to the same conclusion in a roundabout way. But I
want to ask you one question. Did you know beforehand that _it killed
desire_?"

"No. Neither Sarakoff nor I foresaw that."

"Well, if you had let me into your confidence before I could have told
you that right away in the general principle contained in the saying
that you can't eat your cake and have it. It's just another aspect of
the law of the conservation of energy, isn't it?"

"I always had a doubt----"

"Naturally. It's intuitional. The laws of the universe are just
intuitions put into words. You've carried out an enormous spiritual
experiment to prove what all religions have always asserted however
obscurely. All religion teaches that you can't eat your cake and have
it. That's the essence of religion, and you, formerly a cut-and-dried
scientist, have gone and proved it to the whole world for eternity.
Rather odd, isn't it?"

I watched his face with interest. It was thin and the complexion was
transparent. His eyes, wonderfully wide and brilliantly stained by the
germ, produced in me a new sensation. It was akin to enthusiasm, but in
it was something of love, such as I had never experienced for any man. I
became uplifted. My whole being began to vibrate to some strangely
delicate and exquisite influence, and I knew that Thornduck was the
medium through which these impulses reached me. It was not his words but
the atmosphere round him that raised me temporarily to this degree of
receptivity.

"It is odd," I said.

He continued to look at me.

"You have a message for me?" I observed at last.

"Why, yes, I have," he replied. "You have done wrong, Harden. You have
worked black m