hand. You know I must
not."

"Take my hand," cried Lefevre. "I know what it means. Take my life!
Leave me but enough to recover. I give it you freely, for I wish you to
live. You shall not die. By heaven! you shall not die. O Julius, Julius!
why did you not tell me this long ago? Science has resource enough to
deliver you from your mistake."

"Lefevre," said Julius,--and his eyes sparkled with tears and his
weakening voice was choked,--"your friendship moves me deeply--to the
soul. But science can do nothing for me: science has not yet sufficient
knowledge of the principle on which I lived. Would you have me, then,
live on,--passing to and fro among mankind merely as a blight, taking
the energy of life, even from whomsoever I would not? No, I must die!
Death is best!"

"I will not let you die," said Lefevre, rising to take a pace or two on
the deck. "You shall come home with me. I shall feed your life--there
are dozens besides myself who will be glad to assist--till you are
healed of the devouring demon you have raised within you."

"No, no, no, my dear friend!" cried Julius. "I have steadily sinned
against the most vital law of life."

"Julius," said Lefevre, standing over him, "my friendship, my love for
you may blind me to the enormity of your sin, but I can find it in me to
say, in the name of humanity, 'I forgive you all! Now, rise up and live
anew! Your intelligence, your soul is too rare and admirable to be
snuffed out like a guttering candle!'"

"Lefevre," said Julius, "you are a perfect friend! But your knowledge of
this secret force of Nature, which we have both studied, is not so great
as mine. Let me tell you, then, that this mystical saying, which I once
scoffed at, is the profoundest truth:--

"'Who loveth life shall lose it all;
Who seeketh life shall surely fall!'

"There is no remedy for me but death, which (who knows?) may be the
mother of new life!"

"It would have been better for you," said Lefevre, sitting down again
with his head in his hands, "better--if you had never seen Nora."

"Nay, nay," cried Julius, sitting up, animate with a fresh impulse of
life. "Better for her, dear, beautiful soul, but not for me! I have
truly lived only since I saw her, and I have the joy of feeling that I
have beheld and known Nature's sole and perfect chrysolite. But I must
be quick, my friend; the dawn will soon be upon us. There is but one
other thing for me to speak of--my method of taking to