When the seance was over, the maid invited Madame into another room to have tea; and Sir
Basil had tea and a long talk with Lanny. He wanted to know what the younger man had
learned and what he now believed. Lanny, watching the aging and anxious face, knew exactly
what was wanted. Zaharoff wasn't an eager scientist, loving truth for truth's sake; he was a man
tottering on the edge of the grave, wanting to believe that when he departed this earth he was
going to join the woman who had meant so much to him. And what was Lanny, a scientist or a
friend?
He could say, quite honestly, that he didn't know; that he wavered, sometimes one way,
sometimes the other. Then he could go on to waver in the right direction. Certainly it had
seemed to be the duquesa speaking: not the voice, but the mind, the personality, something
which one never touches, never sees, but which one comes to infer, which manifests itself by
various modes of communication. The duquesa speaking over a telephone, for example, and the
line in rather bad condition!
Zaharoff was pleased. He said he had been reading the books. "Telepathy?"' he said. "It seems to
me just a word they have invented to save having to think. What is this telepathy? How would
it work? It cannot be material vibrations, because distance makes no difference to it. You have
to suppose that one mind can dip into another mind at will and get anything it wants. And is
that easier to credit than survival of the personality?"
Said Lanny: "It is reasonable to think that there might be a core of the consciousness which
survives for a time, just as the skeleton survives the body." But he saw that this wasn't a
pleasing image to the old gentleman, and hastened to add: "Maybe time isn't a fundamental
reality; maybe everything which has ever existed still exists in some form beyond our reach or
understanding. We have no idea what reality may be, or our own relationship to it. Maybe we
make immortality for ourselves by desiring it. Bernard Shaw says that birds grew wings
because they desired and needed to fly."
The Knight Commander and Grand Officer had never heard of
Lanny told him about that metabiological panorama. They talked about abstruse subjects until
they were like Milton's fallen angels, in wand'ring mazes lost; also until Lanny remembered
that he had to take his wife to a dinner-party. He left the old gentleman in a much happier
frame of mind, but he felt a little guilty, thinking: "I hope Robbie doesn't have any more stocks
to sell him!"
IX
Lanny found his wife dressing, and while he was doing the same she told him some news.
"Uncle Jesse was here."
"Indeed?" replied Lanny. "Who saw him?"
"Beauty was in town. I had quite a talk with him."
"What's he doing?"
"He's absorbed in his election campaign."
"How could he spare the time to come here?"
"He came on business. He wants you to sell some of his paint-ings."
"Oh, my God, Irma! I can't sell those things, and he knows it."
"Aren't they good enough?"
"They're all right in a way; but they're quite undistinguished-there must be a thousand
painters in Paris doing as well."
"Don't they manage to sell their work?"
"Sometimes they do; but I can't recommend art unless I know it has special merit."
"They seemed to me quite charming, and I should think a lot of other people would like
them."
"You mean he brought some with him?"
"A whole taxicab-load. We had quite a show, all afternoon; that, and the Comintern, and
that-what is it?—diagrammatical?—"
"Dialectical materialism?"
"He says he could make a Communist out of me if it wasn't for my money. So he tried to get
some of it away from me."
"He asked you for money?"
"He may be a bad painter, dear, but he's a very good salesman."
"You mean you bought some of those things?"
"Two."
"For the love of Mike! What did you pay?"
"Ten thousand francs apiece."
"But, Irma, that's preposterous! He never got half that for a painting in all his life."
"Well, it made him happy. He's your mother's brother, and I like to keep peace in the family."
"Really, darling, you don't have to do things like that. Beauty won't like it a bit."
"It's much easier to say yes than no," replied Irma, watching in the mirror of her dressing-
table while her maid put the last touches to her coiffure. "Uncle Jesse's not a bad sort, you
know."
"Where are the paintings?" asked the husband.
"I put them in the closet for the present. Don't delay now, or we'll be late."
"Let me have just a glance."
"I didn't buy them for art," insisted the other; "but I do like them, and maybe I'll hang them
in this room if they won't hurt your feelings."
Lanny got out the canvases and set them up against two chairs. They were the regular
product which Jesse Blackless turned out at the rate of one every fortnight whenever he chose.
One was a little gamin, and the other an old peddler of charcoal; both sentimental, because Uncle
Jesse really loved these рооr people and imagined things about them which fitted in with his
