“Mr. Carter,” Barnes said eagerly, “if he really is Jesus, isn’t that—I mean, his talking to you about your real self—isn’t that exactly what might be expected? Do you know any other person in the world who would do it?”

“No, I don’t. And I don’t know anyone else I would take it from. But what’s the use, Barnes? He is simply an extraordinary person—I will grant that—with certain hypnotic gifts. But when he went out, I watched the people he passed by in the office. They didn’t even turn to look at him. It was the same out on the sidewalk. He went his way like any average man, unnoticed.”

“Perhaps it is only to those who acknowledge him as Lord that he reveals himself at all times. Do you remember the light?”

“Oh, that light! It is another illusion. Just ordinary, zodiacal light. What is the use of harking back to that?”

Barnes was silent, but he looked at Carter with a wistful look that belonged to the new vision of his life. “Do you realize how long you were together, Mr. Carter?”

“No.”

“It was a full hour.”

“You don’t say! Honestly, I really was interested. He was an unusual talker.” As if to conceal feelings he did not want Barnes to know, Carter turned to his desk and picked up Logan’s camera. “I didn’t get so under the spell that I missed a chance to get that picture we’ve wanted.”

“Did you ask his consent?”

“Of course not.”

“And you said you could be a gentleman if you had to,” Barnes began hotly.

“Keep cool now. We are in the newspaper business, aren’t we? It is our business to get the news and interest the public. This camera is the noiseless sort with the new shutter. I had it resting on this pile of books and it looked just like them. I got two good shots and no one could tell when the thing went off. Take the plates down and develop them. We can get them ready for the four o’clock edition.”

Barnes took the camera without a word. He hesitated as if he wanted to ask some questions, but finally went away, leaving Carter seated at his desk. As he turned to look back, he saw Carter pick up the manuscript and bend over his desk in his usual reading posture.

Twenty minutes later, Carter was aware that Barnes had come in and was talking to him. How often he had spoken his name, he did not know. But he finally turned around.

“These plates,” Barnes was saying. “Look at them.” He held them up in front of Carter.

The editor looked. There was not a line, not a shadow, visible on the glass.

That same Monday morning, while these events were occurring at the office of the Raymond Gazette, Henry Maxwell was pacing his study. Grey was with him. Both men were going over the scenes of the day before.