sickened smile, "Sir, are you jesting?"

"I am incapable of trickery," dryly responded Pollexfen.

"But not of delusion?" suggested the girl.

"A fool may be deceived, a chemist never."

"And you would have the fiendish cruelty to tear out one of my eyes
before I am dead? Why, even the vulture waits till his prey is carrion."

"I am not cruel," he responded; "I labor under no delusion. I pursue no
phantom. Where I now stand experiment forced me. With the rigor of a
mathematical demonstration I have been driven to the proposition set
forth in this agreement. Nature cannot lie. The earth revolves because
it _must_. Causation controls the universe. Men speak of _accidents_,
but a fortuitous circumstance never happened since matter moved at the
fist of the Almighty. Is it chance that the prism decomposes a ray of
light? Is it chance, that by mixing hydrogen and oxygen in the
proportion of two to one in volume, water should be the result? How can
Nature err?"

"She cannot," Lucile responded, "but man may."

"That argues that I, too, am but human, and may fall into the common
category."

"Such was my thought."

"Then banish the idea forever. I deny not that I am but mortal, but man
was made in the image of God. Truth is as clear to the perception of the
creature, _when seen at all_, as it is to that of the Creator. What is
man but a finite God? He moves about his little universe its sole
monarch, and with all the absoluteness of a deity, controls its motions
and settles its destiny. He may not be able to number the sands on the
seashore, but he can count his flocks and herds. He may not create a
comet, or overturn a world, but he can construct the springs of a watch,
or the wheels of a mill, and they obey him as submissively as globes
revolve about their centres, or galaxies tread in majesty the
measureless fields of space!

"For years," exclaimed he, rising to his feet, and fixing his eagle
glance upon his pupil, "for long and weary years, I have studied the
laws of light, color, and motion. Why are my pictures sharper in
outline, and truer to nature, than those of rival artists around me?
Poor fools! whilst they slavishly copied what nobler natures taught, I
boldly trod in unfamiliar paths. I invented, whilst they traveled on the
beaten highway, look at my lenses! They use glass--yes, common
glass--with a spectral power of 10, because they catch up the childish
notion of Dawson, and Harwick, that it is impossibl