ieve you can be right. I--I went round to see Father
Bourke. That was after Mrs. Ascher said it was blasphemy and I really
wanted to know. Father Bourke is one of the priests at St. Gabriel's. I
consulted him."

"Well," I said, "what did he tell you?"

"He said it was all right and that I needn't bother about what
Protestants said was blasphemy. They don't know. At least Father Bourke
seemed to think they couldn't know."

"You go by what Father Bourke says and you'll be safe."

I should particularly like to hear Father Bourke and Mrs. Ascher arguing
out the subject of blasphemy together. They might go on for years and
years before either of them began to understand what the other meant by
the word. But it would be little less than a crime to involve the simple
soul of Tim Gorman in the maze of two separate kinds of casuistry.

"In any case," I said, "I don't take Mrs. Ascher's view of the matter. I
don't agree with her."

"I don't see," said Tim, "how cinematographs can be blasphemies so long
as there aren't any pictures of religious things. I'm sure it must be
all right and I can go on with what I want to do. If I can succeed in
making the figures stand out from one another, as if they were really
there----"

"You'll add a new terror to life," I said. "But that needn't stop you
doing it if you can."

"I think I can," he said eagerly. "You see it's the next thing to be
done. The cinematograph is perfect up to that point It must make a new
start if it's to go any further. I should like to be the man who makes
the next step possible. What's wanted now is--is----"

"The illusion of distance."

"That's it. That's what I mean. It's a matter of optics. Just making a
few adjustments, and I think I see the way to manage it."

"If you do," I said, "you'll make an immense fortune. The world will
pay anything, absolutely anything to the man who provides it with a new
torture. It's an odd twist in human nature--though I don't know why I
should say that. Oddness is really the normal thing in human nature."

"But I want a thousand dollars," said Tim, "or five hundred dollars at
the very least. I must try experiments."

"If you ask your brother----" I said.

"Michael isn't nice to me about it," said Tim. "He isn't nice at all.
When I asked him for a thousand dollars he said he'd get it for me on
condition that I allowed him to manage my cash register in his own way.
But I won't do that. I know what he wants to do."