THE UNDYING FIRE
tragic greatness of life is to be hidden from my boys. . . .
"Yet even so," continued Mr. Huss, "I do not see why you should be so anxious for technical science and so hostile to the history of mankind."
"Because it is not a true history," said Sir Eliphaz, his hair waving about like the hair of a man electrified by fresh ideas. "Because it is a bunch of loose ends that are really not ends at all, but only beginnings that pass suddenly into the unseen. I admit that in this world nothing is rationalised, nothing is clearly just. I admit everything you say. But the reason? The reason? Because this life is only the first page of the great book we have to read. We sit here, Mr. Huss, like men in a waiting-room. . . . All this life is like waiting outside, in a place of some disorder, before being admitted to the wider reality, the larger sphere, where all the cruelties, all these confusions, everything—will be explained, justified—and set right."
He paused, and then perceiving that Mr. Huss was about to speak he resumed, raising his voice slightly.
"And I do not speak without my book in these matters," he said. "I have been greatly impressed—and, what is more, Lady Burrows has been greatly impressed, by the writings of two thoroughly scientific men, two thoroughly scientific men, Dr. Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge. Ever since she lost her younger sister early in life Lady Burrows has followed up this interest. It has been a great consolation to her. And the point is, as Sir Oliver
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