Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt: ... of palms, and shone on his dark features with a touch of grayish- green luminance that gave him for the moment an almost spectral appearance. Dr. Dean glanced at him with a smile. "What a figure of an Egyptian, is he not!" he said to Courtney and Denzil Murray. "Look at him! What height and symmetry! What a world of ferocity in those black, slumbrous eyes! Yes, Monsieur Gervase, I am talking about you. I am admiring you!" "Trop d'honneur!" murmured Gervase, carefully shielding with one hand the match with which he was kindling his cigarette. "Yes," continued the Doctor, "I am admiring you. Being a little man myself, I naturally like tall men, and as an investigator of psychic forms I am immensely interested when I see a finely-made body in which the soul lies torpid. That is why you unconsciously compose for me a wonderful subject of study. I wonder now, how long this torpidity in the psychic germ has lasted in you? It commenced, of course, originally in protoplasm; but it must have continued through various low forms and met with enormous difficulties in attaining to individual consciousness as man, - because even now it is scarcely conscious." Gervase laughed. "Why, that beginning of the soul in protoplasm is part of a creed which the Princess Ziska was trying to teach me to-day," he said lightly. "It's all no use. I don't believe in the soul; if I did, I should be a miserable man." "Why?" asked Murray. "Why? Because, my dear fellow, I should be rather afraid of my future. I should not like to live again; I might have to remember certain incidents which I would rather forget. There is your charming sister, Mademoiselle Helen! I must go and talk to her, - her conversation always does me good; and after that picture which I have been unfortunate enough to produce, her presence will be as soothing as the freshness of morning after an unpleasant nightmare." He moved away; Denzil Murray with Courtney followed him. Dr. Dean remained behind, and...