riend," replied the doctor, "I am simply an advocate of
religious freedom, not a--"

"And religious freedom, as our wise Bill Nye once said, is but the art
of giving intolerance a little more room, eh?" returned Haynerd with a
laugh.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "You are a Philistine," he said. "I
am a human interrogation."

Carmen took the doctor by the arm and led him to a place beside her at
the table. "You--you didn't bring poor Yorick?" she whispered, with a
glint of mischief in her bright eyes.

"No," laughed the genial visitor, "he's a dead one, you told me."

"Yes," replied the girl, "awfully dead! He is an outward manifestation
of dead human beliefs, isn't he? But now listen, Father Waite is going
to speak."

After a brief explanation to the doctor of the purpose of the
meeting, and a short resume of their previous deductions, Father Waite
continued the exposition of his subject.

"The physical universe," he said, "is to human beings a reality. And
yet, according to Spencer's definition of reality, we must admit that
the universe as we see it is quite unreal. For the real is that which
endures."

"And you mean to say that the universe will not endure?" queried
Haynerd abruptly.

"I do," replied Father Waite. "The phenomena of the universe, even as
we see it, are in a state of ceaseless change. Birth, growth,
maturity, decay, and death seems to be the law for all things
material. There is perpetual genesis, and perpetual exodus."

"But," again urged Haynerd, "matter itself remains, is indestructible."

"Not so," said Father Waite. "Our friend, Doctor Morton, will
corroborate my statement, I am sure."

The doctor nodded. "It is quite true," he said in reply. "And as
revolutionary as true. The discovery, in the past few years, of the
tremendously important fact that matter disintegrates and actually
disappears, has revolutionized all physical science and rendered the
world's text books obsolete."

"And matter actually disappears?" echoed Miss Wall incredulously.

"Absolutely!" interposed Hitt. "The radium atom, we find, lasts some
seventeen hundred years, or a trifle longer. What becomes of it when
it is destroyed? We can only say that it disappears from human
consciousness."

"And so you reason that the whole material universe will ultimately
disappear from the human consciousness?"

"Yes," returned Hitt, "I feel certain of it. Let us consider of what
the universe consists. For many m