Mrs. Rice expressed the convictions of many of her associates by saying, humorously: "No, I don't want to be saved. I'm not lost. I don't know as I care for immortality. Forever is a long time--I might get bored; anyhow, the future must take care of itself."
In all the drawing-rooms of his friends, Morton Serviss was a most welcome guest. His frank, boyish ways, his careless dress, his freedom from cant, his essential good-fellowship deceived the most of his acquaintances into thinking him a mere dabbler in science, a man of wealth amusing himself; but Weissmann, who was qualified to know, said: "He has persistency, concentration, a keen mind, a clear eye, and a voonderful physique."
He belonged, moreover, to the men of imagination, not to those who write books or poems, but to those who tunnel mountains, build vast bridges, invent new motors, and play with electrical currents as if they were ribbons. The novelist basing himself on what he knows of human nature projects himself into the unknown, just as the scientist who stands on the discoveries of those before him feels out into the darkness for new stars, new forces. And yet as Clarke and his party indignantly declared, "both novelist and scientist ignore the question most vital to us all--the question of the soul's survival after death"--ignore it till some loved one dies, then they, too, agonize in secret over the mystery for a space, only to rise and go back to their work, concealing the conviction which their hour of anguish brought to them.
Perhaps it was not chance, but deep design, which had brought this vigorous young investigator face to face with a mystery crying out for solution--certainly it was not without craft that the unseen powers had baited their hook with the almost irresistible allurement of a young and ardent girl. If there is logic in the shadow, fate was on Viola's side.