“Ah, man! But the problem of whence and whither! To solve it is my life; I live for that alone; let’m talk.”

“You ought to be re-named the ‘Science of Trance-States,’ Reuel. How a man can grind day and night beats me.” Livingston handed him a cigar and for a time they smoked in silence. At length Reuel said:

“Shake hands with Poverty once, Aubrey, and you will solve the secret of many a student’s success in life.”

“Doubtless it would do me good,” replied Livingston with a laugh, “but just at present, it’s the ladies, bless their sweet faces who disturb me, and not delving in books nor weeping over ways and means. Shades of my fathers, forbid that I should ever have to work!”

“Lucky dog!” growled Reuel, enviously, as he gazed admiringly at the handsome face turned up to the ceiling and gazing with soft caressing eyes at the ugly whitewashed wall through rings of curling smoke. “Yet you have a greater gift of duality than I,” he added dreamily. “Say what you will; ridicule me, torment me, but you know as well as I that the wonders of a material world cannot approach those of the undiscovered country within ourselves—the hidden self lying quiescent in every human soul.”

“True, Reuel, and I often wonder what becomes of the mind and morals, distinctive entities grouped in the republic known as man, when death comes. Good and evil in me contend; which will gain the mastery? Which will accompany me into the silent land?”

“Good and evil, God and the devil,” suggested Reuel. “Yes, sinner or saint, body or soul, which wins in the life struggle? I am not sure that it matters which,” he concluded with a shrug of his handsome shoulders. “I should know if I never saw you again until the struggle was over. Your face will tell its own tale in another five years. Now listen to this:” He caught up the book he had been reading and rapidly turning the leaves read over the various passages that had impressed him.

“A curious accumulation of data; the writer evidently takes himself seriously,” Livingston commented.

“And why not?” demanded Reuel. “You and I know enough to credit the author with honest intentions.”

“Yes; but are we prepared to go so far?”

“This man is himself a mystic. He gives his evidence clearly enough.”

“And do you credit it?”

“Every word! Could I but get the necessary subject, I would convince you; I would go farther than M. Binet in unveiling the vast scheme of compensation and retribution carried about in the vast recesses of the human soul.”

“Find the subject and I will find the money,” laughed Aubrey.

“Do you mean it, Aubrey? Will you join me in carrying forward a search for more light in the mysteries of existence?”

“I mean it. And now, Reuel, come down from the clouds, and come with me to a concert.”

“Tonight?”