“I have seized the first opportunity,” said Thessaly, as Paul, composure restored, entered the library, “of offering a personal explanation of my behaviour.”

Paul took his extended hand, waiving the proferred explanation.  “Except as regards the damage done to your property, I am not interested.  Had your disappearance been dictated by nothing more than a sudden desire for solitude I should have understood.  If I should ever be called upon to act as you did on that occasion I should know that a friend would understand.  If he misunderstood he would not be a friend.  I fear I am somewhat dusty.  I have been destroying a portion of my legacy.”

Jules Thessaly, dropping back into the padded arm-chair in which he had been seated, stared hard at Paul.

“Not the illustrations to that portion of Scheherazade’s narrative invariably expunged from all respectable editions of the Thousand and One Nights?”

Paul nodded, pushing a box of cigars across the table.  “You know them?”

“I know that Sir Jacques possessed such pictures.”

“I have destroyed them.”

“Why?”

Paul selected a cigar ere looking up to meet the faintly amused glance of Thessaly.  “They bore witness to a phase of his life which he chose to conceal from the world.  I could do no less.”

“You speak with contempt.”

“The hypocrite is contemptible.  A frank libertine may be an amusing fellow.  If we do not think so, we can avoid him.”

“I agree with you up to a point.  But in justice remember that every man has pages in his history which are never displayed to the world.”

“Very likely.  But every man does not pose as a saint.  Those who seek the company of a professed rake do so at their own peril.  But the disguised satyr is a menace to the innocent.”

“I would suggest that some specific ‘innocent’ occurs to your mind?”

“The adder does not bite itself.  Were there no stories?”

“A few.  But Sir Jacques was a model of discretion; as an under-secretary he would have glittered in the political firmament.  There was a pretty village girl who promised at one time to provide the district with agreeable table-talk, but unfortunately for Miss Kingsbury and company the affair apparently fell through.”

“He was, as you say, a model of discretion.”

“Ah.  There are records?  Well, you were justified in destroying them.”

“It is hard to understand.”

“To understand whom ­Sir Jacques or the girl?  You cannot mean the girl.  A man who reaches the age of thirty without understanding women is like a bluebottle who devotes a summer morning to an endeavour to fly through a pane of glass.”

“You speak like an early Roman.”

“What more admirable model?  Consider the Roman institutions; perfect sanitation and slavery.  We abolish one and adopt the other, with the result that a healthy democracy has swallowed us up.  The early Romans were sages.”

“You have no sympathy for Sir Jacques’ victims?”

“Except where the chivalrous warriors of Prussia are concerned, and with other rare exceptions, I never think of women as victims, Mr. Mario.”

“Not even in the case of an aged hypocrite who probably posed as the Platonic friend?”

“Platonic friendship is impossible up to sixty-five.  The most ignorant girl knows it to be so, for every woman has hereditary memory.”

“Your creed is a harsh one.  You take no count of snares and pitfalls.”

“Snares and pitfalls cannot be set upon the highroad.”

“And how should you define this highroad?”

“As the path selected by our unspoiled instincts.  It is ignorance posing as education that first blunts those instincts, dogma disguised as religion and hypocrisy misnamed ‘good behaviour.’”

“You would allow instinct to go unfettered?”

“Provided it remains unspoiled.  But first I would sweep the world of lies.”

“Then you think the world ready for the truth?”

“I know that the world waits for it.”

“Do you think the world will recognise it?”

“In part the world has already recognised it.  We lived in an age which was eternally demanding ’proofs’ ­and which rejected them when they were offered.  But the great catastrophe which has overwhelmed us has adjusted our perspective.  Few of us to-day dare to doubt the immortality of the soul.  We failed to recognise joy as a proof of our survival after death, but we cannot reject the teaching of sorrow.”

“Love and friendship, of course, are proofs not only of immortality, but of pre-existence and the survival of the individual.”

“And can you make the disciples of the clap-trap which passes for religion believe this, Mr. Mario?”

“I propose to try.  But the task is hard.  There are pieces difficult to fit into the scheme.”

“You agree with me that the war, which was born of ignorance, will bear the fruit of truth?”

“I agree that it will bear the fruit of truth, but I do not agree that it was born of ignorance.  Men did not cause the war.  It is a visitation from higher powers, and therefore has a grand purpose.  There are no accidents in the scheme of the universe.”

“You think those higher powers are powers of good?”

“Wherever the powers of darkness walk the Powers of Light stand arrayed before them.”

There was a muffled crash in the adjoining room, which brought Paul, startled, to his feet.  He crossed the library and entered the panelled dining-room.  The portrait of Sir Jacques had fallen from its place above the mantelpiece, breaking a number of ornaments as it fell.  Davison was already on the spot and stood surveying the wreckage.

“The ’eat of the extraordinary fire, no doubt, sir,” he said.  “The ’ook is loosened, as you observe.”

Paul stared at the man with unseeing eyes; he was striving to grasp the symbolic significance of the incident, but it eluded him, and presently he returned to the library, where Jules Thessaly was glancing at a book which he had taken from a shelf apparently at random.

“An accident?”

“Yes.  A picture has fallen.  Nothing serious.”

“Ah.  Do you know this war-writer?” Thessaly held up the book in his hand ­“Rudolf Kjellen.”

“By name,” replied Paul, absently.  “Does he understand?”

“Up to a point.  His thesis is that a great and inevitable world-drama is being played and that he who seeks its cause in mere human plotting and diplomacy is a fool.  States are superhuman but living biological personalities, dynamic, and moving toward inevitable ends beyond human control.”

“He is mad.  All the German propagandists are mad.  The insanity of Germany is part of the scheme of the world-change through which we are passing.  He recognises the superhuman forces at work and in the same breath babbles of ‘states.’  There is only one earthly State and to that State all humanity belongs.”

Jules Thessaly returned Kjellen’s work to its place.  “If I do not misunderstand you,” he said, fixing his gaze upon Paul, “you contemplate telling the world that the churches have misinterpreted Revelation and that Christ as well as the other Masters actually revealed reincarnation as the secret of heaven and hell?”

“That is my intention.”

“Your audience is a vast one, Mr. Mario.  No man for many generations has been granted the power to sway thought, which nature has bestowed upon you.  Your word may well prevail against all things ­even in time against Rome.  You recognise that you are about to take up a mighty weapon?”

“I do.  Publicity is the lever of which Archimedes dreamed; and I confess that I tremble.  You think the churches will oppose me?”

“Can you doubt it?”

“I fear you are right, yet they should be my allies, not my enemies.  In the spectacle of a world in arms the churches must surely recognise the evidence of failure.  If they would survive they must open their doors to reform.”

“And what is the nature of the reform you would suggest?”

“Conversion from nineteen centuries of error to the simple creed of their Founder.”

“Impossible.  Churches, like Russian securities, may be destroyed but never converted.”

“Yet in their secret hearts millions of professed churchmen believe as I believe ­”

“ ­That heaven and hell are within every man’s own soul and that the state in which he is born is the state for which he has fitted himself by the acts of his pre-existence?”

Paul inclined his head.  “No other belief is possible to-day.”

“There are higher planets than Earth, perhaps lower.  The ultimate deep is Hell, the ultimate height Heaven.  The universe is a ladder which every soul must climb.”

From a catechism Jules Thessaly’s words had developed into a profession of faith, and Paul, who stood watching the speaker, grew suddenly aware ­a phenomenon which all have experienced ­that such a profession had been made to him before, that he had stood thus on some other occasion and had heard the same words spoken.  He knew what Jules Thessaly was about to say.

“The knowledge which is yours is innate knowledge beyond human power to acquire in one short span of life; it is the result of many lives devoted to study.  For the task you are about to take up you have been preparing since the world was young.  All is ordained, even your presence in this room to-night ­and mine.  Where last did we meet ­where first?  Perhaps in Rome, perhaps Atlantis; but assuredly we met and we meet again to fulfil a compact made in the dawn of time.  I, too, am a student of the recondite, and it may be that some of the fragments of truth which I have collected will help you to force recognition of the light from a world plunged in darkness.”

“In utter darkness,” murmured Paul.  And clearly before him ­so clearly as almost to constitute hallucination –­arose a vision of Flamby Duveen as she appeared in the secret photographs.

“You have definitely set your hand to the plough?”

“Definitely.”

Jules Thessaly advanced, leaning forward across the table.  He stared fixedly at Paul.  “To-night,” he said, “a new Star is born in the West and an hour will come when the eyes of all men must be raised to it.”