“Yes,” said Lefevre, “the giving of pleasure is always more exquisite and satisfactory than the getting it.”

“I lost life,” continued Julius, without noting Lefevre’s remark,—­“I lost life,—­vital force, nervous ether, electricity, whatever you choose to call it,—­at an enormous rate, but I as quickly replenished my loss.  I had revelled for some time in this deeper life of give and take before I discovered that this faculty of recuperation also was curiously and wonderfully active in me.  Whenever I fell into a state of weakness, well-nigh empty of life, I withdrew myself from company, and dwelt for a little while with the simplest forms of Nature.”

“But,” asked Lefevre, “how did you get into such a low condition?”

“How? I lived!” said he with fervour. “Yes; I lived: that was how!  I had always delighted in animals, but then I began to find that when I caressed them they were not merely tamed, as they had been wont, but completely subdued; and I felt rapid and full accessions of life from contact with them.  If I lay upon a bank of rich grass or wild flowers, I had to a slight extent the same revivifying sensation.  The fable of Antaeus was fulfilled in me.  The constant recurrence and vigour of this recuperation not only filled me with pride, but also set me thinking.  I turned to medical science to find the secret of it.  I entered myself as a student in Paris:  it was then I met you.  I read deeply, too, in the books of the mediaeval alchemists and sages of Spain, which my father had left me.  It came upon me in a clear flood of evidence that Nature and man are one and indivisible, being animated by one identical Energy or Spirit of Life, however various may be the material forms; and that all things, all creatures, according to the activity of their life, have the power of communicating, of giving or taking, this invisible force of life.  It furthermore became clear to me that, though the force resides in all parts of a body, floating in every corpuscle of blood, yet its proper channels of circulation and communication are the nerves, so that as soon as a nerve in any one shape of life touches a nerve in any other, there is an instant tendency to establish in them a common level of the Force of Life.  If I or you touch a man or woman with a finger, or clasp their hand, or embrace them more completely, the tendency is at once set up, and the force seeks to flow, and, according to certain conditions, does flow, from one to another, evermore seeking to find a common level,—­always, that is, in the direction of the greater need, or the greater capacity.  I saw then that not only had I a greater storage capacity, so to say, than most men, but also, therefore, when exhaustion came, I had a more insistent need for replenishment, and a more violent shrinking at all times from any weak or unhealthy person who might even by chance contact make a demand on my store of life.”

“And is that your secret?” asked Lefevre.  “I have arrived in a different way at something like the same discovery.”