door. He looked at me, grinning rather like a
triumphant maniac.

"It's coming!" he cried, without pausing, "I've almost got it!" I smiled
at him: he looked very ludicrous at that moment.

"What have you got?" I asked.

"Good Lord, man, the Secret--the Secret!" And then he was gone again,
the door closing upon his victorious cry, "The Secret!"

I was, of course, amused. But I was also very much interested. I knew
Sir John well enough to realize that, however amazing his appearance
might be, there would be nothing absurd about his "Secret"--whatever it
was. But it was useless to speculate. I could only hope for
enlightenment at dinner. So I immersed myself in one of the surgeon's
volumes from his fine Library of Imagination, and waited.

I think the book was one of Mr. H. G. Wells', probably "The Sleeper
Awakes," or some other of his brilliant fantasies and predictions, for I
was in a mood conducive to belief in almost anything when, later, we sat
down together across the table. I only wish I could give some idea of
the atmosphere that permeated our apartments, the reality it lent to
whatever was vast and amazing and strange. You could then, whoever you
are, understand a little the ease with which I accepted Sir John's new
discovery.

He began to explain it to me at once, as though he could keep it to
himself no longer.

"Did you think I had gone mad, Dennell?" he asked. "I quite wonder that
I haven't. Why, I have been studying for many years--for most of my
life--on this problem. And, suddenly, I have solved it! Or, rather, I am
afraid I have solved another one much greater."

"Tell me about it, but for God's sake don't be technical."

"Right," he said. Then he paused. "Dennell, it's _magnificent_! It will
change everything that is in the world." His eyes held mine suddenly
with the fatality of a hypnotist's. "Dennell, it is the Secret of
Eternal Life," he said.

"Good Lord, Sir John!" I cried, half inclined to laugh.

"I mean it," he said. "You know I have spent most of my life studying
the processes of birth, trying to find out precisely what went on in the
whole history of conception."

"You have found out?"

"No, that is just what amuses me. I have discovered something else
without knowing yet what causes either process.

"I don't want to be technical, and I know very little of what actually
takes place myself. But I can try to give you some idea of it."

* * * * *