“I know you have,” said Julius.  “But my peculiar secret is not that, though it is connected with it.  I am growing very tired,” said he, abruptly.  “I must be quick, Lefevre,” he continued in a hurried, weak voice of appeal; “grant me one little last favour to enable me to finish.”

“Anything I can do I will, Julius,” said Lefevre, suddenly roused out of the half-drowsiness which the soft night induced.  He was held between alarm and fascination by the look which Julius bent on him.

“I am ashamed to ask, but you are full of life,” said Julius:  “I am at the shallowest ebb.  Just for one minute help me.  Of your free-will submit yourself to me for but a moment.  Will you do me that service?”

“Yes,” said Lefevre, after an instant’s hesitation; “certainly I will.”

Julius half rose from his reclining position; he turned on Lefevre his wonderful eyes, which in the mysterious twilight that suffused the midsummer night burned with a surprising brilliance.  Lefevre felt himself seized and held in their influence.

“Give me your hand,” said Julius.

The doctor gave his hand, his eyes being still held by those of Julius, and instantly, as it seemed to him, he plunged, as a man dives into the sea, into a gulf of unconsciousness, from which he presently emerged with something like a gasp and with a tremulous sensation about his heart.  What had happened to him he did not know; but he felt slacker of fibre, as if virtue had gone out of him, while Julius, when he spoke, seemed refreshed as by a draught of wine.

“How are you?” asked Julius.  “For heaven’s sake don’t let me think that at the last I have troubled much the current of your life!  Will you have something to eat and drink?  There’s wine and food below.”

“Thank you; no,” said Lefevre.  “I am well enough, only a little drowsy.”

“I am stronger,” said Julius, “but it will not last; so let me finish my story.”

Then he continued.  “Having explained to myself, in the way I have told you, the ease of my unwitting replenishment of force whenever I was brought low, I set myself to improve on my discovery.  I saw before me a prospect of enjoyment of all the delights of life, deeper and more constant than most men ever know,—­if I could only ensure to myself with absolute certainty a still more complete and rapid reinvigoration as often soever as I sank into exhaustion.  I was quite sure that no energy of life is finer or fuller than the human at its best.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Lefevre, turning away with an involuntary shudder.

“For heaven’s sake!” cried Julius, “don’t shrink from me now, or you will tempt me to be less frank than I have been.  I wish to make full confession.  I know, I see now, I have been cruelly, brutally selfish—­as selfish as Nature herself!—­none knows that better than I. But remember, in extenuation, what I have told you of my origin and my growth.  And