“Julius,” said Lefevre, firmly, “if your method is so perfect—­as I believe it must be from what I have seen—­I dare not lay on myself the responsibility of possessing its secret.”

“Would not my example keep you from using it selfishly?”

“Does the experience of another,” demanded the doctor, “however untoward it may be, ever keep a man from making his own?  I dare not—­I dare not trust myself to hold your perfect secret.”

“Then share it with others,” responded Julius, promptly; “and I daresay it is not so perfect, but that it could be made more perfect still.”

“I’ll have nothing to do with it, Julius; you must keep and use it yourself.”

“Then,” cried Julius, throwing himself on his bed of cordage, “then there will be, indeed, an end of me!”

There was no sound for a time, but the soft rush of the sea at the bows of the yacht.  They had left the Thames water some distance behind, and were then in that part of the estuary where it is just possible in mid-channel to descry either coast.  The glorious rose of dawn was just beginning to flame in the eastern sky.  Lefevre looked about him, and strove to shake off the sensation, which would cling to him, that he was involved in a strange dream.  There lay Julius or Hernando Courtney before him; or at least the figure of a man with his face hid in his hands.  What more could be said or done?

In the meantime light was swiftly rushing up the sky and waking all things to life.  A flock of seagulls came from the depth of the night and wheeled about the yacht, their shrill screams strangely softened in the morning air.  At the sound of them Julius roused himself, and raised himself on his elbow to watch their beautiful evolutions.  As he watched, one and another swooped gracefully to the water, and hanging there an instant, rose with a fish and flew away.  Julius flung himself again on his face.

“O God!” he cried.  “Is it not horrible?  Even on such a beautiful day as this death wakes as early as life!  Devouring death is ushered in by the dawn, hand in hand with generous life!  Awful, devilish Nature! that makes all creatures full of beauty and delight, and then condemns them to live upon each other!  Nature is the sphinx:  she appears soft and gentle and more lovely than heart can bear, but if you look closer, you see she is a creature with claws and teeth that rend and devour!  I thought, fool that I was! that I had found the secret to solve her riddle!  But it was an empty hope, a vain imagination....  Yet, I have lived!  Yes, I have lived!”

He rose and stood erect, facing the dawn, with his back to Lefevre.  He stood thus for some time, with one foot on the low bulwark of the vessel, till the sun leaped above the horizon and flamed with blinding brilliance across the sea.

“Ah!” he murmured.  “The superb, the glorious sun!  Unwearied lord of Creation!  Generous giver of all light and life!  And yet, who knows what worlds he may not have drawn into his flaming self, and consumed during the aeons of his existence?  It is ever and everywhere the same:  death in company with life!  And swift, strong death is better than slow, weak life!...  Almost the splendour and inspiration of his rising tempt me to stay!  Great nourisher and renewer of life’s heat!”