Britt shrugged his shoulders. "What would you do when both
parents--the living and the dead--consent? Only a husband could
intervene, and Clarke seems to be about to claim that place. No, I see
no hope for the girl. She may be right, after all, in joining Clarke."

Serviss rose to release the emotional tension under which he had kept
his limbs. "You don't know their present plans?"

"No, only that Clarke is going to publish soon." He looked round the
room. "What a development since my time! Bacteriology and
auto-transportation are neck and neck in their amazing expansion."

Thereupon they dropped all reference to the Lamberts and their trials,
and turned their minds upon phagocytes and other ravening mites whose
likes and dislikes, minute as they are, work more devastation than
cannon.

Serviss's work was over for that day; after Britt went away he sat
idly at his desk, his mind busy with the revolting pictures called up
by what he had heard of Viola. "They are destroying a beautiful soul,"
he exclaimed, bitterly, as he recalled the charm of her face and voice
on that ride to the mine. "They are forcing a charming girl into an
abominable life, they are warping her moral fibre into ugliness and
death--and Clarke is the fanatic devil of the scheme."

The desire to see her, to talk with her, to measure the change in her
grew very strong--so strong that he meditated a call, but the thought
of Clarke cut the resolution off before it was fully formed.
"Probably Britt is right--Clarke's rotten soul has fatally infected
hers."

When Weissmann came in Serviss turned to him and said: "Doctor, I want
to ask you a very unusual question."

"Proceed," replied the old man, who spoke with a little touch of the
German now and then.

"What do you think of the claims of spiritualism?"

Weissmann did not smile as Serviss had expected. He became grave. "I
am not qualified to judge. Speaking generally, I would say there are
many phases to be considered. There are some millions of people who
believe in it--which would argue some small basis of truth to start
with. On the other hand, the extraordinary credulity of these people
is to be taken into account."

"You mean they are those bereaved and anxious to believe?"

"Precisely. Again, speaking generally, I find few things impossible in
this world of mystery. To take an old metaphor, I would not be
surprised to find a grain of wheat in all this bushel of chaff. Every
genuine ph