“Quite!” agreed Santoris, with a slight smile—­“As I told you long ago at Oxford, a man’s life is his own affair entirely.  He can do what he likes with it.  But he can no more command the result of what he does with it than the sun can conceal its rays.  Each individual human being, male and female alike, moves unconsciously in the light of self-revealment, as though all his or her faults and virtues were reflected like the colours in a prism, or were set out in a window for passers-by to gaze upon.  Fortunately for the general peace of society, however, most passers-by are not gifted with the sight to see the involuntary display.”

“You speak in enigmas,” said Harland, impatiently—­“And I’m not good at guessing them.”

Santoris regarded him fixedly.  His eyes were luminous and compassionate.

“The simplest truths are to you ‘enigmas,’” he said, regretfully—­“A pity it is so!  You ask me what I mean when I say a man is ’bound to reveal himself.’  The process of self-revealment accompanies self-existence, as much as the fragrance of a rose accompanies its opening petals.  You can never detach yourself from your own enveloping aura neither in body nor in soul.  Christ taught this when He said:—­’Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’  Your ’light’—­remember!—­that word ‘light’ is not used here as a figure of speech but as a statement of fact.  A positive ‘light’ surrounds you—­it is exhaled and produced by your physical and moral being,—­ and those among us who have cultivated their inner organs of vision see it before they see you.  It can be of the purest radiance,—­ equally it can be a mere nebulous film,—­but whatever the moral and physical condition of the man or woman concerned it is always shown in the aura which each separate individual expresses for himself or herself.  In this way Dr. Brayle reveals his nature to me as well as the chief tendency of his thoughts,—­in this way you reveal yourself and your present state of health,—­it is a proved test that cannot go wrong.”

Mr. Harland listened with his usual air of cynical tolerance and incredulity.

“I have heard this sort of nonsense before,”—­he said—­“I have even read in otherwise reliable scientific journals about the ‘auras’ of people affecting us with antipathies or sympathies for or against them.  But it’s a merely fanciful suggestion and has no foundation in reality.”

“Why did you wish me to explain, then?” asked Santoris—­“I can only tell you what I know, and—­what I see!”

Harland moved restlessly, holding his cigar between his fingers and looking at it curiously to avoid, as I thought, the steadfast brilliancy of the compelling eyes that were fixed upon him.

“These ‘auras,’” he went on, indifferently, “are nothing but suppositions.  I grant you that certain discoveries are being made concerning the luminosity of trees and plants which in some states of the atmosphere give out rays of light,—­but that human beings do the same I decline to believe.”