BERTIE COCHRANE had taken them straight across by ferry to their house in Long Island, near Port Washington, had seen them comfortably installed, and returned in the evening to his flat in town. As regards Thurso, the spiritual conflict of the Divine and Infinite against all that was mortal and mistaken had begun, and of the ultimate issue of that he had no doubts whatever. But there was another conflict before him, more difficult than that—a conflict of things that were all good, but yet seemed to be unreconcilable; and as he sat now, after eating the one dish of vegetables which was his dinner, he felt torn by these fine conflicting forces.

For to-morrow, at the joint request of Thurso and his sister, he was going down to stay with them. That arrangement he could not refuse. Since they were so kind as to ask him, it was better in every way, as regards the cure he was undertaking, to do so. Thus, all day and every day he would see and be with the girl whom he loved with all the intensity of his jubilant and vital soul. Yet, since he would be there only as a healer, and since, except as a healer, he would never have been there, he knew that he must entirely swamp and drown all his private concerns. He must say no word, make no sign. Even that was not enough, he feared. He must school himself to feel no longing. His love itself must be drowned—that strong and beautiful thing—while he was there; for he would be there only as one who could bring, and had promised to bring, light to this man who was obscured by error. That would be the sole reason for his presence there, and it was worth not a moment of further debate or argument. And as he sat here now, he wondered if he was strong enough to do what he knew he must do, or whether, even at the eleventh hour, it was better to refuse to go to Long Island at all, but send someone else. On the other hand, he had himself promised to cure Thurso. He and his sister had come from England on that express understanding and under promise. But would it not be better to break that rather than lead himself into the temptation of using for his own ends the opportunity that had been given to him, and accepted by him, of demonstrating the eternal truth which was more real than any human love?

He knew, too, the hourly difficulties that his position would entail. Lady Maud thirsted for more knowledge about the truth which she already believed, and it would be he, naturally, who would talk to her about it, sitting opposite her, and seeing the glowing light of the knowledge that was being unveiled in her eyes. And yet all the time he must keep his thoughts away from her—see nothing, know nothing, except what he taught her. Not a thought could be spared to anything else; he would be there to heal, and while he healed all that was his belonged to two persons only—his Master and his patient.

He fixed his mind on this till it all acquiesced, and not only all open revolt, but all covert rebellion and dissent ceased. And the moment that was done, even as, without apparent reason, a sudden surge of water in a calm sea sets the weeds waving and submerges rocks, so from the unplumbed abyss of Love a wave swept softly and hugely over his doubts and drynesses, covering them with the message from the infinite sea. What had all his doubt and rebellion been about? He did not know.

The cold outside was intense; it had come on to freeze more sharply than ever at sunset, but he got up and set his window open. The aid that gave him in the work that lay before him now was adventitious only, but he found it easier to detach himself from the myriad distractions of mortal mind if, instead of breathing the close atmosphere of a room that was full of human associations, the taintless air of out of doors, of night and of cold, came in upon him. Very possibly that feeling itself was a claim of mortal mind, but it was better to yield to such a claim when it was clearly innocent, if it told him that the realisation of truth was thereby made more complete to his sense, than to waste energy in fighting it. And then, as he had done before when he went to the bedside of Sandie Mackenzie, he called his thoughts home. Thoughts of the day and the sea, of the sunshine, and the windless frost and the virgin snow, came flocking back, and went to sleep. Other thoughts, a little more laggard, a little less willing to rest, had to obey also: he had to forget the book he had been reading during his dinner, the swift hour of skating he had enjoyed after he came back to town, the friend he had met and talked with in the street. And another thought more wide-awake yet had to be put to sleep (and, if possible, be strangled as it was sleeping)—namely, his strong physical disgust for a man who, through sheer weakness and self-indulgence, had allowed himself to get into the state in which he had found his patient: that slack lip, that sallow face, that dull, stale eye, the thinning, whitening hair, were like some voluntary and ghastly disfigurement, as if Thurso had striven with his own hands to deface and render hideous his own body, and had succeeded so well that to Cochrane this morning he had been scarcely recognisable. But all this had to sleep; all his disgust had to be done away with. You could not heal a leper by shuddering at his sores.

Slowly and with conscious effort that was done, but there was still one soaring thought abroad, stronger of wing, harder to recall than any. Maud, too, had to be called home (and the irony of the phrase struck him). Her beauty, her incomparable charm, her serene, splendid bravery with her brother, and his love for her, must now be all non-existent for him. She must cease—all thought of her must cease.

Then, like the force that turns the driving-wheel of some great engine that is just beginning to haul its ponderous freight out of the station, the power of the Divine Mind began to press within him. Once and again the wheel spun round, not biting the rail, for the load was very heavy; but soon the driving power began to move him, the engine, and the dead and heavy weight of the trucks weighted with the error and sickness he was to cure. Under the roof of the station it was dark and gloomy, but outside, he knew, was sunshine. There was only one force in the world that could bring him and his trucks out there, but that it should do that his mind had to strain and strive and grip the rail. Sometimes it seemed that the weight behind was immeasurable, sometimes that the force which drove him was so vast that he must burst and be broken under its pressure. But he knew, that little atom of agonised yet rapturous consciousness, which was all that he could refer to as himself, knew that he and his freight were in control of the one Power that cannot go wrong, that never yet made a mistake. The hands that held him were infinitely tender, even as they were infinitely strong.

* * * * *

It was some four hours later when he got up from his chair. The fire had gone out, and the bitterness of the frost had frozen the surface of the glass of water he had poured out, and he broke the crust of ice on it and drank. Two minutes later he was undressed and asleep, having plunged into bed with a smile that had broadened into the sheer laughter of joy.

Thurso awoke next morning, feeling, so he told himself, the stimulus and exhilaration of this new climate and the bracing effect of this dry, sunny morning of frost. After the narrow berth of his cabin it was a luxury to sleep in a proper bed again, and a luxury when awake to lie at ease in it. What an excellent night he had had, too! He had slept from about half-past eleven the night before till he was called at half-past eight—slept uninterruptedly and dreamlessly, without those incessant wakings from agonised dreams of desire which had so obsessed him during the last week. No doubt this change from the sedentary and cramped life of the ship to the wider activities of the land accounted for that, and he felt that the place and the air both suited him. Yesterday had passed pleasantly, too. He, Maud, and Cochrane had been for a long sleigh-drive in the afternoon, and—there was no use in denying it, though he felt some curious latent hostility to him—Cochrane was a very attractive fellow. He had the tact, the experience, the manner of a cultured and agreeable man, and these gifts were somehow steeped in the effervescence and glow of youth. Never had Thurso seen the two so wonderfully combined. Youth’s enchantment was his still, the eager vitality of a boy.

When they returned he had had an hour’s talk with him alone, and at Cochrane’s request had told him the whole history of his slavery. And, somehow, that recital had been in no way difficult. Once again, as on the occasion of Maud’s poaching, Cochrane had made it easy not to be ashamed. Thurso felt as if he was telling it all to a man who understood him better than he understood himself, who did not in the least condone or seek to find excuses for this wretched story, but to whom these hideous happenings appeared only in the light of a nightmare, as if Thurso had had a terrible dream, and was speaking only of empty imaginings. At the end—the tale was a long one—Cochrane had still been genial.

“Well, now, that is a good start,” he said, “for I guess you haven’t kept anything back. Sometimes people have a sort of false shame, and won’t tell one what is, perhaps, the very worst of all. That must hinder the healer. It must help him, on the other hand, to know just exactly what the trouble is.”

“Quite so; that is only reasonable,” said Thurso.

But to himself he thought how odd it was that so straightforward and simple a fellow should be such a crank. Not that he was not perfectly willing to let the crank do what he could for him. He would have worn any amulet or charm if anyone seriously thought it could help him. But, again, he was conscious of his latent hostility, and this time he fancied he perceived the cause of it. For Cochrane was here to rob him of the most ecstatic moments of his life. It was the memory of them which made him feel that he was in the presence of a thief, an enemy.

“Well, now, before I go back to town for the night,” continued Cochrane, “I want to start you right away with one or two thoughts to keep in your mind. Remember, first of all, that all that you have been suffering from is unreal. It has no true existence, in the sense in which life and joy are true. Try to realise that, for thus you yourself will help in the accomplishment of your healing. A patient can help his medical man by determining to get well, can’t he? In the same way you can help me by trying to realise that you have never been ill. Real illness is a contradiction in terms.”

“Do you mean that not only are the effects of the drug unreal, but the cravings for it are unreal?” asked Thurso. “Surely one can only judge of the truth of a thing by one’s feelings. One’s feelings are the ultimate appeal, and I assure you I know of nothing so real as my craving. If it had been less real I should not have come to America.”

“Ah! that’s where you make a mistake,” said Cochrane. “There may not be an atom of truth in the thing which is the cause of your feeling most strongly. Suppose, for instance, a lot of your friends entered into a conspiracy to play a practical joke on you, had you arrested, got you convicted of murder, and condemned to be hung, with such realism and completeness that you actually believed it was going to happen. You would be terrified, agonised, and your terror and agony would be the realest thing in the world to you. But it would be all founded on a lie—on a thing that didn’t exist. And your craving is founded on a lie—such a stupid lie, too, believe me. As if evil has any power compared with good!”

Thurso thought this illustration rather well-chosen, but he was a little tired, a little impatient. Also, the mention of his craving seemed to have stirred it into activity again. He began to wonder if there was any chemist’s shop near. They had passed one on their drive—“ride” Cochrane called it—but that was a couple of miles off.... And the thought made him the more impatient.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but I am not a Christian Scientist, and the method you employ doesn’t interest me, since I do not believe in it. It is right for me to tell you that; I only came here because I felt I owed it to—to others to do anything that was suggested.”

Cochrane laughed with serene good-humour, though Thurso’s tone had not been very courteous.

“Oh, we’ll soon alter all that,” he said, “and I am telling you a little about the treatment, in order that you may work with me, give me the help the ordinary patient gives his doctor.”

“I suppose I’m pretty bad,” he observed.

“I should just think you were. Why, you are all wrapped up in error! Have you ever unwound a rubber-covered golf ball? There are yards and yards of india-rubber string, and you think it’s going on for ever. But at the centre there is a core. And there is a core in you too. But we’ve got to unwind the error in order to get at it.”

Thurso got up; he was feeling every moment more fidgety and impatient. He was beginning to want the drug most terribly; his craving was growing with mushroom-like rapidity. Yet while Cochrane was there he felt that his will to get well, his desire to be free, was keen also. And that gave him an impulse of honesty.

“I tell you this, too,” he said: “I’m longing for the drug most frightfully now. Ah, help me!” he cried in a sudden wail of appeal, “for I know what I shall do when you are gone.”

“Yes, tell me that,” said Cochrane; and the wail of the voice told him that true impulse still existed, whatever Thurso’s own forecast was.

“Well, I shall go and see where Maud is,” he said, “and if she is downstairs I shall tell her that I am going to my room to sleep till it is time to dress, so that I can get away by myself. She trusts me, I think, even after all that has happened. Good heavens! why am I telling you this?” he said suddenly. “You will tell her now, damn you! and spoil it all.”

Cochrane interrupted quietly.

“Your damning me doesn’t hurt,” he said, “and I solemnly promise you not to give your plan away. There’s no chemist very near, I’m afraid, but there’s one in Port Washington; we passed the place this afternoon.”

“Ah, you’ve warned him,” said Thurso.

“I have done nothing of the kind, nor shall I. Pray get on.”

The pleasure that the diseased imagination took in the projection of its plans was suggestive of the joy of their realisation. Thurso gulped as he spoke.

“I take it, then, that you won’t interfere,” he said. “Well, I shall go to my room and forge—yes, forge a prescription. I’m getting a rare hand at that.”

He gave a little cackle of delight; the impulse that a couple of minutes ago had prompted the cry for help was half smothered, and he was conscious of one need only. He pointed a warning finger at Cochrane.

“It’s understood that you do nothing to hinder me,” he said, “nothing tangible, practical, though you can treat me—don’t you call it?—till all’s blue. Then I shall send to the stable, and tell a man and horse to go down to the chemist’s, wait for the prescription to be made up, and bring it back. Lord Thurso, you know! Republicans think a lot of a lord, and they’ll hurry, because they’ve got a fine specimen of one now. And I shall sit gnawing my nails till that bottle comes back. Then—two hours’ Paradise before dinner. God! I wonder the whole world doesn’t take to laudanum. Paradise made up while you wait. Cheap, too.”

“Remarkably cheap,” said Cochrane.

“Ah, you are laughing at me. But you don’t know, you can’t guess——”

Thurso came close up to him and pressed his arm. The latent hostility was all gone; here was a friend who should be told what he was missing. So easy was it to get out of hell into purgatory, and through purgatory past the unbarred gates of a Paradise of rose and gold. No flaming-sworded angel was there; a glass and a bottle were the pass-word for admittance. You had but to draw a stopper, chink a glass, and drink, and the whole world was changed. The thought invaded and encompassed him. He could think of nothing but that.

“Suppose you try it one night,” he said to Cochrane, “when you are staying down here, as you will be to-morrow? You just see; there’s no need for any healing any more—the thing is health and life. I say, wouldn’t it be funny if, after I had come over here to be cured by you, I succeeded in pulling you after me. Just try some night.”

Bertie Cochrane nodded at him.

“Well, it may come to that,” he said; “there’s nothing which you can say is impossible.”

Thurso laughed again.

“Maud too, perhaps,” he said. “What a good time we might have: ‘up to heaven all three,’ as it says in that poem by—by—I never can remember names now!”

Cochrane could barely restrain a little shudder of disgust at this, but he checked it.

“Well, you’re making an excellent start,” he said, “because you’re telling me all your plans for the future, just as you have told me all the history of the past. And as for the present, I can figure that up pretty correctly now. Now, do you know what you’ve been doing for this last ten minutes? You’ve been almost forcing yourself to do what you say you are going to do by imagining it. Every action begins in the brain. But just before that another action began. You said, ‘Ah, help me!’ Do you remember that?”

“Yes, but it’s useless,” said Thurso. “You see for yourself.”

“It isn’t useless. I never spend my time over useless things. When you said that your will was on the right side. And even now when you are half-crazy for that drink, aren’t you ashamed to think of what you have just suggested—that Lady Maud, your sister, should be dragged down with you? Aren’t you ashamed? You have been very candid; I want your candid opinion on that.”

Thurso frowned.

“I didn’t say that; I’m sure I didn’t say that.”

“But indeed you did. Now come back on the right side again. You’ve been suggesting things to yourself, and imagining them with remarkable vividness. So now, to make it fair, plan another evening for yourself. Come, what would be pleasant? Don’t make a long evening of it; I want you to go to bed before eleven.”

“Why?” asked Thurso.

“Just because it’s a sensible hour. I shall be treating you by then.”

“But Maud tried to treat me once on the steamer,” said he, “and the effect was that I couldn’t get to sleep at all. I thought she was in the room.”

For the moment, anyhow, the edge of his desire was dulled. There was something that compelled attention in this big, strong young man, who was so cheerful and quiet, who looked so superlatively well, and seemed to diffuse sanity and health.

“Why, that was real good of Lady Maud, wasn’t it?” he said, “and that feeling of yours that she was in the room was very likely to happen. I’ll tell you why: like everything else in science, it is so simple. The healer ought quite to sink himself; he shouldn’t be conscious of himself at all. He mustn’t think that he is controlling the working of the power of Divine Love. But that unconsciousness of self only comes with practice. At first the healer finds that his personality obtrudes itself.”

Quite unconsciously Thurso began to be more interested; consciously he knew that he did not want the drug just this moment as devouringly as he had thought. The simplicity of what Cochrane was saying struck him also; it was so exceedingly unlike the torrential inconsequence of Alice Yardly.

“Then why can’t you heal me instantly?” he said. “If error cannot exist in the presence of Divine Love, how is it that time is required for its destruction?”

Cochrane laughed.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said; “but, then, I do not profess to be able to explain everything. Sometimes healing is really instantaneous, sometimes it takes time. But if you ask me why, I confess I can’t tell you. It is so, though.”

He got up.

“Now I must go,” he said, “for though there’s no such thing as time really, it is still possible to miss a train. Now keep on making other pictures of this evening to yourself, and say you will go to bed at eleven.”

Thurso lay back in his big chair after Cochrane had gone, conscious that something else besides laudanum had begun to interest him a little. He felt no leaning or tendency whatever towards Christian Science, and he wanted to find some weak spot in the central theory, some fatal inconsistency, which must invalidate it altogether. There must be one even in the little he had heard about it. At this moment Maud came in.

“I’ve had a long talk to Cochrane,” he said, “and he left only ten minutes ago. Maud, give me a Christian Science book; I’m going to prove that it’s all wrong.”

She laughed.

“Do, dear; it is the business of everybody to expose error. Shall I read it to you?”

“Yes, if you will.”

Then suddenly his craving began to return, sharpening itself instantaneously to hideous acuteness. His mind was like some light vehicle, from which the driver had been spilled, being galloped away with by the bolting, furious horses of habit. Never before had the stroke fallen upon him with such suddenness. “A fine first-fruit of the value of Christian Science,” he said to himself. Yet though its onslaught made him almost dizzy, he retained his presence of mind and the cunning which seemed to have been developed in him since he took to the drug. He mastered his voice completely; he mastered also that watering of the mouth and the automatic swallowing movement of his throat.

“Or shall we read after dinner?” he said. “That sleigh-drive made me so sleepy. I think I should drop asleep at once if you began to read.”

Maud looked at him for a moment with a pity that was instinctive; she could not help it. Then she laughed again.

“Oh, Thurso, how transparent!” she said. “You want to go to your bedroom and forge—yes, forge the prescription which you forged with such brilliant success on the steamer, and send it down to the village to get your horrid bottle. It’s all very well to forge once or twice, but you really mustn’t get in the habit of it; it grows on one dreadfully, I am told.”

He came towards her white and shaking.

“That quack Cochrane has been talking to you, has he,” he said. “He promised not to interfere.”

“He hasn’t interfered. You are perfectly free to do what you like. And he is not proved to be a quack yet.”

He laid his hand on her arm.

“Maud, just this once,” he said—“do let me have it this once. It shall be the last time. You see, the treatment will soon put me right now.”

“Why do you want my leave?” said she.

“I don’t know. It would make me more comfortable; I should enjoy it more.”

“Well, I propose a slightly different plan,” she said. “I promise you that I will go and get it for you myself at twelve o’clock to-night if you still really want it. Hold on for six hours—five hours—and then, if you ask me, I will take down the forged prescription myself. Only in the interval you must do your best—your best, mind, not to think about it. And you must go to bed at eleven. That’s not much to ask, is it?”

He weighed this in his mind, and soon decided, for there was something rapturous in the waiting, provided he knew he would soon get it.

“Yes, of course I’ll wait,” he said, “though I can’t guess what your point is. You really promise it me at twelve? And you won’t tell Cochrane?” he added, with a little spurt of glee, thinking that for some inexplicable reason Maud was going to help him.

“Oh no, I won’t tell him; you probably will. Now, if the sleepiness of the sleigh-drive has gone off, I will read to you. It will help to pass the hours till twelve.”

It had required all Maud’s faith to get through with this, but she had understood and agreed with what Mr. Cochrane had said before he left. He wanted, above all things, that Thurso should make an effort of abstention, though it was only for a few hours, of his own accord, and believed that at present he could hardly do so unless he was bribed, so to speak. He had, in fact, suggested this plan.

“And if he wants it at twelve?” she asked.

“Keep your promise. But he won’t. He can’t.”

All this Thurso thought over as he lay in bed next morning watching his valet put out his clothes. He had gone to bed, as he had promised, before eleven, hugging to himself the thought that midnight was coming closer every minute. And then he had simply fallen asleep, and when he woke the pale winter sunlight was flooding the room.

Yet, mixed with the exhilaration of this cold, bracing air, the memory of the pleasant day before, the sense of recuperation after his excellent night, there came the feeling as he got up and dressed, turning over these events in his head, that he had been tricked. He had no idea how the trick was done, or how it was that he could have gone to sleep when, if he had but kept awake so short a time, he would have enjoyed, and that with no sense of concealment or surreptitious dealing, the one sensation that turned life into paradise. Certainly it had been extremely neatly done. As a conjurer, Cochrane’s sleight of mind, so to speak, was of the most finished sort, for, as has been said, Thurso had had no sense of his presence or intimation of his influence. Cochrane, however, would be here to-day, and perhaps he would explain. But the feeling of having been tricked somehow piqued him, and the pique was not lessened by the fact that he could not guess how the trick was done. Of course, it must have been suggestion or hypnotism in some form; but the odd thing was that neither Maud nor Cochrane had suggested to him at all that he should go to sleep. He had gone to sleep by accident without intending to do anything of the sort, and without any feeling that others were intending it for him.

While he was dressing he heard the sound of sleigh-bells, which probably betokened Cochrane’s arrival, and when he got downstairs he found him and Maud already breakfasting.

Cochrane nodded to him.

“Good morning,” he said. “Now Lady Maud will tell you that neither she nor I have spoken a word about you this morning. I know nothing of what has happened here since I left last night. I told her, by the way, just before I left, to promise to get your drink for you, if you wanted it, at twelve o’clock midnight. Now let’s hear what happened.”

“I went to Thurso’s room at twelve and knocked,” said Maud. “There was no answer, so I went in. I called him several times, I even touched him, but he didn’t wake.”

Cochrane laughed.

“I call that pretty good,” he said.

“Oh, this is childish!” broke in Thurso. “Maud, do you swear that that is true?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you or Mr. Cochrane must have hypnotised me or drugged me,” he said.

“I know less about hypnotism than I know of the inhabitants of Mars,” said Cochrane. “Or what do you think we drugged you with?”

“Well, how did you do it, then?” he asked. “I congratulate you, anyhow. It was very neat.”

“I didn’t do it. I had no idea, at least, whether you were asleep or awake at midnight. I only knew that Divine Love was looking after you.”

Something rather like a sneer came into Thurso’s voice.

“Did—ah! did Divine Love tell you so?” he asked.

“Yes, most emphatically. He has promised to look after us all, you know, and do everything that is good for us. My word! you’ve never seen such a beauty of a morning outside. Cold, though.”

Thurso was undeniably in a very bad humour by this time. He felt convinced in his own mind that there had been some hypnotic force or suggestive influence used on him last night; but when a man denies it, and simply attributes all that has happened to the working of Divine Love, you cannot contradict him. Maud, however, had read to him last night out of some Christian Science book, and he had found, he thought, a hundred inconsistencies in it. Cochrane’s last words, too, were utterly inconsistent, simple as they sounded.

“How can you say it is cold,” he asked, “when your whole Gospel is rooted, so I understand, in the unreality of all such things—cold, heat, pain, and so on? Or did I misunderstand, do you think, what Maud read to me last night? I certainly gathered that neither cold nor heat had any real existence.”

“No; but we think it has,” said Cochrane, with his mouth full.

“Then, is it not what the Reverend Mrs. Eddy calls ‘voicing error’ to allude to the temperature of the morning?”

Cochrane laughed, a great big genial laugh.

“Oh, we don’t—at least, I don’t—make any claim to be beyond feeling cold or heat when there is no reason for not feeling it.”

“I beg your pardon.”

Cochrane still looked amused and quite patient.

“Well, if for any cause it was necessary that I, in healing you, should have to stand in a tub of ice-cold water, I don’t imagine it would affect me much. There would be a reason for my doing it. But in the ordinary way we say, ‘This is cold, this is hot.’ They don’t hurt. My time is taken up in denying things that do hurt.”

“Though nothing hurts.”

“False belief hurts, and its consequences.”

Maud joined in. Thurso was being tiresome and irritable.

“Dear Thurso, pass the marmalade, please. I have a false claim of wanting some, so don’t tell me there isn’t any. I propose to indulge my false claim. Oh, don’t be severe with us; it is such a pity, and spoils my pleasure.”

“I was merely inquiring into these matters,” said Thurso rather acidly, for his mind still chafed at the trick, or so he called it, that had made him go to sleep last night.

Maud’s false claim of wanting marmalade was soon satisfied, and she got up.

“Now, Mr. Cochrane has promised to give me instruction for half an hour, Thurso,” she said, “and after that I vote we go out. There’s a lake, he says, not far off. We might skate.”

“And what is to happen to me?” he asked. “Am I to have treatment or laudanum, or to be put to sleep again?”

Bertie Cochrane looked up at him suddenly. For half a second he allowed himself to be stung, affronted, by Thurso’s tone. But he recovered immediately.

“Now, honestly, which would you like best?” he asked.

Then, though the moment was, as measured by time, an infinitesimal one, in eternity his soul had thrown itself at the foot of Infinite Love, reminding Him of His promise, like a child, calling Him to help.

The acidity and sneering criticism suddenly died out of Thurso’s mind. His moods altered quickly enough and violently; it may have been that only.

“You know I want to be cured,” he said.

Cochrane made a little sign to Maud, who left the room, leaving the two men alone.

“Yes, I know you do,” he said gently, “and you’re going to be cured. But you can help or hinder. All breakfast, you know, you’ve been hindering. ’Tis such a pity. You’ve been asking questions, which I love to be asked, and love answering too, when I can answer them, not because you wanted to know, but because you wanted to catch me out. Why, of course, you can catch me out, because often and often I am bound by error and claims of mortal mind. Also, I don’t know absolutely everything—I don’t indeed. But when you want to catch me out like that, it means you are adopting a hostile attitude to me and to that which I hope to bring you. That hinders me. It isn’t fair.”

Cochrane shook his head at him, like some nice boy remonstrating kindly with a friend whom he likes for not “playing the game.” Then he went on more seriously.

“Now, what’s the trouble?” he said. “Why are you hostile? Is it just because Infinite Love came to your help last night, and sent you to sleep, instead of letting you drink that poisonous stuff? I guess it’s that. But to think or suggest that I hypnotised you or drugged you is childish. To doubt that it all happened in any other way than the way it did is error on your part. Why not accept a perfectly simple explanation. Can you seriously offer any other? How often before, when you’ve been wanting the stuff badly, and have known you would get it in an hour, have you dropped off to sleep instead? Why, never. And what is the first occasion of it happening? When I was treating you, bringing you into the presence of Divine Love—not suggesting things either to Him or you, but just leaving you together. I treated you for some four hours last night, beginning soon after dinner.”

“But it’s all impos——” began Thurso. “I don’t understand it, anyhow.”

“That’s a different matter,” said Cochrane.

“But explain. If you’ve brought me there, is it all over? Am I cured?”

“No; because you have made a habit of error, and that habit has to be broken. You’ve got to form a new habit of non-error. You will have to put yourself in the hands of Love often and often before you get rid of this. At least, I expect that, though we can’t tell in what manner He will choose to heal you. But I expect that: from what we know a habit takes longer to cure than an occasional lapse. It is hard to forget a thing we have got by heart. And we’ve got to ask, to keep on asking.”

Again the hostile attitude was smothered, and interest took its place.

“But why?” asked Thurso. “Why, if error is all a mistake, without real existence, does it bind us? How can it?”

“Gracious! I can’t tell you,” said Cochrane. “But there’s no doubt it is so.”

“And you can heal people who don’t believe?” he asked.

“Why not? But a man who didn’t believe couldn’t heal. And by the time the cure is complete, as far as I know, the patient nearly always believes.”

Thurso was asking questions now in a different spirit to that which had prompted them before. He knew the difference himself.

“You spoke of laudanum as poisonous stuff just now,” he said. “But if God made everything, including poppies, how can it be poisonous?”

Cochrane laughed.

“Well, we had better ask Lady Maud to come back,” he said. “It was about that very point that I was going to talk to her to-day. Now, if you care to listen to that, since you have asked the question, pray do. But if it bores you, why, if you’ll read the paper or occupy yourself for half an hour, we can then all start out skating, or what you please.”

“But aren’t you going to treat me?” asked Thurso.

“Oh, I was at it this morning for some time,” he said. “I’ve paid you the morning visit, so to speak.”

Then again some spirit of antagonism entered into Thurso, and when Maud came back he crossed over to the fire with the paper. But the news was of no importance or interest, since it chiefly concerned American affairs, which meant nothing to him, and by degrees he found himself attending less to the printed page and more to the voice that sounded so cheerful and serene. Sometimes he found himself mentally ridiculing what was said, but yet he listened. It was arresting, somehow, and whether it was only the personality of the speaker that arrested him, or what he said, he found himself, whether approving or disapproving, more and more absorbed in it.

Cochrane spoke first, as he said he was going to do, about the apparently poisonous or sanative effects of drugs. These effects, he maintained, were not inherent in the drugs themselves, but in the belief of those who used them. It was quite certain, for instance, from the purely medical point of view, that an injection of plain water could be made, and that the patient, believing it to be morphia, would sleep under the influence of what had no influence at all. He slept because he believed he had been given something which would make him sleep. But, from the Christian Science point of view, to use drugs for curative purposes was merely to encourage the false belief that they could in themselves cure, while, on the other hand, anyone who knew and fully believed that they could neither be health-giving nor destructive of health might, if he chose, eat deadly poison, and be none the worse for it. But no one who held this belief would do so merely as a demonstration to satisfy the idle curiosity of those who did not believe.

Up till now he had been speaking quietly, as if all that was mere commonplace and superficial. But now intenser conviction vibrated in his voice.

“All this,” he said, “though, of course, it is perfectly true, is only a detail, a little inference that follows from the real and vital proposition. How error originally came in I don’t pretend to say. What we have got to deal with to-day is that error is here in embarrassing quantities, and that one of the commonest forms of it is to attribute real existence—real, that is to say, in comparison with the reality of Love—to material things. What is truly worth our concern is not to know what does not exist, but to know what does. And one thing only exists, and that is God, in all His manifestations. Originally, as we all know, He made the world, and pronounced what He made to be good; but that seems to have been before error entered. But the Infinite Mind, which is Divine Love, is all that has any real being. And as light, pure white light, can be split up, so that different beams of it appear as of all the colours of the rainbow, so that when you say, “This is blue, this is red,” you are only speaking of aspects of light, so when you say, “This is unselfish, this is courageous, this is pure,” you are only speaking of one of the colours of God. It is good that we should contemplate any one of these, for each of them is lovely; but we must continually be fusing them all together in our thought, so that they are mingled and made one again. And when that is done, when by the power of the little we know of the Infinite Mind we bring together all we can conceive of love and purity and unselfishness, then it is God we are contemplating. And whenever we contemplate Him like that, there is no existence possible for sin or error or imperfection. They pass into nothingness, not because we will them to do so, or make any longer an assertion of their nothingness, but because their existence is inconceivable.”

Thurso had dropped his paper, and was listening, still with occasional antagonism and mental ridicule, but with interest; it was not so dull as the paper. Besides, what if it was true? Then, indeed, his antagonism would be that of some feeble soft-bodied moth fluttering against an express train, and thinking to stop it. And there was something serenely authoritative about these words. It was not as when scribes and Pharisees spoke.

Somehow, also—it was impossible not to feel this—there was the same authority not only in Cochrane’s words, but in his life. The things which he said were borne out by what he did, and it seemed as if it was not his temperament that inspired his words, but the belief on which his words were based that produced a completely happy temperament. Big troubles, big anxieties, he had said, never came near him, but, what to Maud was as remarkable, it appeared that the little frets and inconveniences which she would have said were inseparable from the ordinary life of every day were unable to touch or settle on him. Round him there seemed to be some atmosphere, as of high mountain places, in which the bacilli of worry and anxiety could not live; nothing could fleck or dim the happiness of those childlike eyes. A child’s faith, as she had recognised last summer, shone there, and it was supported and proved by the knowledge and experience of a man. Like all faith, it was instinctive, but every hour of his life endorsed the truth of his instinct.

And if either Thurso or Maud could have guessed how passionate and furious was the struggle going on within him, during this first day or two, between the desire of his human love and the absolutely convinced knowledge that he had no right to use this intimacy into which he was thrown with Maud by the call to cure her brother for his own ends, they would have said that a miracle was going on before their eyes. The tempest of desire, the storm of his longing for her, and, more potent than either, the knowledge that he loved her with all the best that was in him, continually beat upon him; but the abiding-place of his soul was absolutely unmoved by the surrounding tumult, and not for a moment was his essential serenity troubled.

It was the third day after his arrival at the house in Long Island, and he and Maud were sitting together by the fire before evening closed in. The weather this morning had suddenly broken, and instead of the windless, sunny frost a south-easterly gale from the sea had set chimneys smoking and ice melting, and drove torrents of volleying rain against the windows of the shuddering house. Maud at this moment was wiping her eyes, which the pungency of the wood-smoke had caused to overflow.

“You were quite right,” she said, “when you warned me not to have the fire lit in this easterly room. And what makes it more annoying is that you don’t weep also. Is that Christian Science or strong eyes? Perhaps they are the same thing. But I think we had better move into the other room. I can’t stand it.”

The other room was the billiard-room, in which they did not often sit. It was free from smoke, however, and the fire prospered. Thurso had gone upstairs half an hour ago to write letters, and had not yet come back.

“He is so much better,” she said, as she settled herself into a comfortable chair. “His recovery has been quite steady, too. Do you any longer fear a relapse?”

“Oh, I never feared it,” he said, “in the sense that I ever imagined it would baffle me. How could it? Nothing can possibly interfere with truth. But sometimes—sometimes when error has gone very deep, and has been allowed to rest there, you tap a sort of fresh reservoir of it just when you think you are getting to the end of it. In one sense, I suppose, I have feared that. It may not happen, I have no reason to believe that it will, but I have seen very sudden attacks and onslaughts of the most violent kind, even when one thought the cure was practically complete.”

“But surely he has made marvellous progress,” said Maud. “Think; it is only four days since you began to treat him.”

“Yes; no one progress is more marvellous than any other, since all progress is right, but it has been very smooth sailing so far. And—I don’t care whether I am being heretical or not, but I think I am—conditions have been very favourable. Weather, climate, all external influences, have a great effect. They have no real power to help or hinder, but when a soul is bound by a material habit material conditions do come in. It is no use to say otherwise. The depression caused by a wet, windy day, such as to-day, is certainly a false claim, but it goes and hobnobs with other false claims, and they sit round the fire and talk.... But, take it as a whole, those who believe are less affected by such things than those who do not. Mental worry is less felt by the Scientist, because he knows it does not really exist. So he will discount the depressing influences of weather; he won’t so much mind a windy or an oppressive day.”

“And doesn’t weather ever upset you?” asked Maud.

He laughed.

“Oh dear, yes,” he said. “I’ve been having false claims all over me all day, like—like a shower-bath, and all day I’ve been reversing them till I’m dizzy.”

“You have looked serene enough,” she said. “I shouldn’t have guessed it.”

“Well, I hope not, since it is by the serenity that comes from complete conviction of the one Omnipotence that you fight them. If you abandon that, what are you to fight them with?”He looked at her, smiling; but then his smile faded, for he felt for a moment that, in spite of himself, his love must betray itself by word or gesture. And surely there was some answering struggle going on in her, or was it only sympathy, only gratitude for what he had done, that made that beacon in her eyes? Whatever it was she had it in control also.

“Won’t you tell me of them?” she asked. “Sometimes telling a thing, the very putting of it into definite words, shows us how shadowy and indefinite it really is. I—I don’t ask from inquisitiveness.”

“I am sure of that,” he said, “but the thing that has been worrying me most to-day is—at present—absolutely a private affair. Then there is another—I have been letting myself be anxious about your brother, and that is very bad for him as well as me. When I was treating him this morning all sorts of doubts kept coming into my mind. Half the time I was fighting them, instead of giving myself entirely to him.”

“Ah, but you never really doubted,” she said. “I am sure that you denied them.”

“Yes, but I was feeble. I was a muddy, choked channel for the flowing of Divine Love. And I am now. I have to be continually dusting and cleansing myself. I have been having fears.”

“Specific ones? Fear of some definite event?”

“Yes; I’m afraid I have gone as far as that. I have had fears of some violent access of error coming upon him, and I have no reason for fearing. Because if it did occur I should know quite well what to do. There couldn’t be anything to fear really. I guess he’s been getting well so quickly and smoothly that I have allowed myself to wonder whether it could be true, though, of course, I knew it was. But that’s so like feeble mortal mind! The very fact that our needs are answered so abundantly and immediately makes us wonder if it is real!”

Maud got up.

“What would you do if he had a relapse?” she asked.

“I couldn’t say now, and I certainly mustn’t allow myself to contemplate it. But if it came, it would surely be made quite clear to me how to demonstrate over it. We are never left in the lurch like that; it’s only the devil who plays his disciples false, and lets them have fits of remorse just when they want to amuse themselves.”

The flames on the hearth leaped up or died down in response to the great blasts outside which squalled and trumpeted over the house, or paused as if to listen in glee to the riot that they caused. The wind was like a wild creature that, with frightened hands, rattled at the fastenings of the windows as if seeking admittance, till a tattoo of sleet silenced it or drove it away. Then a low, long-drawn whistle of alto note would sound in the chimney, and suddenly rise siren-like to a screech of demoniacal fury, or, like a passage for drums, the rattle of the leafless branches of the tortured trees mixed with the sound of the surf a mile away seemed to portend some deadly disaster. All hell seemed loose in this infernal din of the elements.

Bertie Cochrane drew his chair close to the fire with a little shudder of goose-flesh.

“I was awfully frightened by a storm once when I was a little chap,” he said, “and it has left a sort of scar on my mind which is still tender. I always have to demonstrate to myself when there’s a gale like this; I don’t seem to be able to get used to them. My father died in the middle of that awful storm ten years ago, too. What a confession of feebleness, isn’t it? But I don’t think you would have guessed how I hated storms if I hadn’t told you.”

“No, I don’t think I should,” she said. “But I am so sorry. I am just the opposite. There is nothing I love so much as a gale like this—a maniac. There, listen to that!”

An appalling blast swept by the house, full of shrieks and cries, as if the souls of the lost were being driven along in the pitiless storm, and it seemed as if some window must have burst open, or some door communicating with the night and the tempest have come unlatched, for the thick double curtain which served instead of door between the billiard-room where they sat and the hall outside was lifted a clear foot from the ground, and a flood of cold air, strong as a wind, poured in, making the candles flicker and stream, and stirring the carpet as if a ground swell had passed beneath it. Cochrane jumped up.

“Something must be open,” he said. “The wind has come right into the house.”

Maud got up with him, but before he had pulled the curtain aside for her to pass, the strange wind ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the heavy folds fell to the ground again. But by the front-door, with the latch still in his hand, stood Thurso. The rain dripped from his coat; he was deluged, a waterspout. And Maud’s heart sank when she saw him.

“Why, Thurso,” she said, “what have you been doing? Have you been out in this gale? I thought you were upstairs writing letters.”

He looked from one to the other as he took off his dripping overcoat, and spoke in a voice that both knew, a stammering, stuttering voice.

“I—I finished my letters,” he said, “and then I went out to—to post them—yes, post them. You couldn’t expect a servant to go out in this. Not—not reasonable. And besides, I—I had not been out all day. I—I wanted a breath of fresh air. Sir James told me to be out as much as I could. How did you hear me come in? I thought you were in the drawing-room.”

Maud’s heart sank—sank.

“We were in the billiard-room,” she said.

She looked at Cochrane. All thought of the gale, all trouble of nerves, and whatever else it was that had been obsessing him all day, had passed from him. His eyes were vivid and alight; his face alert again, and full of that huge vitality that was so characteristic of it.

“Why, that was thoughtful of you,” he said. “And perhaps a little errand on your own account? Why, man, there’s a packet in your coat—no, your breast-pocket. It’s bulging. I can see it from here.”

Thurso’s hand tightened on it.

“Yes; I can’t help it,” he said. “Besides, I am much better, am I not? I must break myself of it by degrees, you know.”

Outside the gale yelled defiance; here inside there was tense silence, but it seemed to Maud as if some conflict mightier than that of the elements was going on.

“Ah, do let me have it just this once!” cried Thurso. “I’ve been without it for a week, and I swear to you by all I hold sacred——”

“By laudanum?” said Cochrane.

“Yes, by laudanum, that it shall be a fort-night before I take it again. And don’t send me to sleep this time. I—I think I should die if I didn’t have it.”

“Let’s have a look at the bottle,” said Cochrane.

A look of futile, childish cunning came into Thurso’s face.

“Oh, I think not,” he said. “You—you might forget to give it me back; one always may forget things. Look here, I—I’m going to take it. That’s all about it. I’m awfully grateful to you for all you have done, and to-morrow I will beg your forgiveness, and ask you to go on curing me. But this once you sha’n’t stop me. Besides, there’s no power either for evil or good in drugs.”

“That is blasphemous on your lips,” said Cochrane quickly. “I beg your pardon; I shouldn’t have said that.”

For that moment the light of anger had sprung into his eyes, but it only dulled them, and he stood there in silence a space, while they brightened again with that brilliant serenity and confidence which had been there before. Then he looked at Maud, smiled encouragement to her, and spoke.

“I never stopped you before,” he said. “And I’m not going to stop you now. But you laudanum-drinkers are such selfish fellows. You get away by yourselves, and drink by yourselves, and never treat anybody else. I want some of that too. Do you remember saying that perhaps it would end in your converting me? Well, let’s make a beginning to-night. Let’s have a jolly good drink together. You’ve got enough for us both, I expect, in that big bottle.”

Thurso still looked suspicious, and he kept his hand on his package. But Cochrane’s manner was perfectly sincere, and soon he gave a little cackle of delight. His eyes, too, like Cochrane’s, were very bright, but they were bright with thirst and desire. His mouth, too, so watered that he could hardly swallow quick enough to keep the saliva down.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, “but I’ll do anything if you’ll let me take it, and not stop me. There’s enough for me for to-night and for you for a week. And may I get some more to-morrow?”

“You may do what you choose to-morrow,” said Cochrane, “if you will give me some to-night. I’ve often wanted an opportunity, a proper opportunity, to take it. Why, you might say I had quite a craving for it.”

Maud was looking from one to the other, utterly puzzled. She came close to Cochrane.

“Mr. Cochrane, what are you going to do?” she said. “What are you about? I am frightened.”

He looked at her quickly and radiantly.

“Ah, don’t be frightened,” he said. “You must help and not hinder. I know I am right. Don’t be afraid, and don’t doubt.”