Catherine turned her eyes upon me in wide-open amazement.

“He must be mad!” she said.

I made no reply either by word or look.  We heard Mr. Harland talking, but in a lower tone, and we could not distinguish what he said.  Presently Santoris answered, and his vibrant tones were clear and distinct.

“Why should it seem to you so wonderful?” he said—­“You do not think it miraculous when the sculptor, standing before a shapeless block of marble, hews it out to conformity with his inward thought.  The marble is mere marble, hard to deal with, difficult to shape,—­yet out of its resisting roughness the thinker and worker can mould an Apollo or a Psyche.  You find nothing marvellous in this, though the result of its shaping is due to nothing but Thought and Labour.  Yet when you see the human body, which is far easier to shape than marble, brought into submission by the same forces of Thought and Labour, you are astonished!  Surely it is a simpler matter to control the living cells of one’s own fleshly organisation and compel them to do the bidding of the dominating spirit than to chisel the semblance of a god out of a block of stone!”

There was a pause after this.  Then followed more inaudible talk on the part of Mr. Harland, and while we yet waited to gather further fragments of the conversation, he suddenly threw open the saloon door and called to us to come in.  We at once obeyed the summons, and as we entered he said in a somewhat excited, nervous way:—­

“I must apologise before you ladies for the rather doubting manner in which I received my former college friend!  He is Rafel Santoris—­ I ought to have known that there’s only one of his type!  But the curious part of it is that he should be nearly as old as I am,—­yet somehow he is not!”

I laughed.  It would have been hard not to laugh, for the mere idea of comparing the two men, Santoris in such splendid prime and Morton Harland in his bent, lean and wizened condition, as being of the same or nearly the same age was quite ludicrous.  Even Catherine smiled—­a weak and timorous smile.

“I suppose you have grown old more quickly, father,” she said—­ “Perhaps Mr. Santoris has not lived at such high pressure.”

Santoris, standing by the saloon centre table tinder the full blaze of the electric lamp, looked at her with a kindly interest.

“High or low, I live each moment of my days to the full, Miss Harland,”—­he said—­“I do not drowse it or kill it—­I live it!  This lady,”—­and he turned his eyes towards me—­“looks as if she did the same!”

“She does!” said Mr. Harland, quickly, and with emphasis—­“That’s quite true!  You were always a good reader of character, Santoris!  I believe I have not introduced you properly to our little friend”—­ here he presented me by name and I held out my hand.  Santoris took it in his own with a light, warm clasp—­gently releasing it again as he bowed.  “I call