It caused a little sensation, as you may know, and nearly
got me ousted from the college. But it sold up to two hundred thousand
copies, so it wasn't a bad turn," he added.

"It was published while I was away," said Philip. "I got a copy in Rio
Janeiro, and it haunted me for weeks after I read it. Great Heaven, you
can't believe--"

"I did," interrupted the doctor sharply. "I believed everything that I
wrote--and more. It was my theory of life." He sprang from his chair and
began walking back and forth in his quick, excited way. The flush had
gone from his face now and was replaced by a strange paleness. His lips
were tense, the fingers of his hands tightly clenched, his voice was
quick, sharp, incisive when he spoke.

"It was my theory of life," he repeated almost fiercely, "and that is
the beginning of why I am up here. My theory was that there existed
no such thing as 'the divine spark of love' between men and women not
related by blood, no reaching out of one soul for another--no faith, no
purity, no union between man and woman but that could be broken by low
passions. My theory was that man and woman were but machines, and that
passion, and not the love which we dream and read of, united these
machines; and that every machine, whether it was a man or a woman, could
be broken and destroyed in a moral sense by some other machine of the
opposite sex--if conditions were right. Do you understand me? My theory
was destructive of homes, of happiness, of moral purity. It was bad. I
argued my point in medical journals, and I wrote a book based on it.
But I lacked proof, the actual proof of experience. So I set out to
experiment."

He seemed to have forgotten now that Philip was in the room, and went
on bitterly, as if arraigning himself for something which he had not yet
disclosed.

"It made me a--a--almost a criminal," he continued. "I had no good
thoughts for humanity, beyond my small endeavors in my little field of
science. I was a machine myself, cold, passionless, caring little
for women--thus proving, if I had stopped to consider myself, the
unreasonableness of my own theory. Coolly and without a thought of the
consequences, I set out to prove myself right. When I think of it now
my action appalls me. It was heinous, for the mere proving of my theory
meant misery and unhappiness for those who were to prove it to me. I
was not cramped for money. So I determined to experiment with six
machines--three young men and